Riley's Boy
by hollie-whyte
Summary: James Potter and Lily Evans were always destined to be together, so what'll happen when she messes everything up by rejecting him one time too many for his heart to handle. Who'll be there to pick up the pieces? Riley will, even if it kills her.
1. Chapter 1

Gabriella Philips and Susanna Samuels, my best friends who I was lucky enough to meet on the Hogwarts' Express in my first year, just before James Potter and Remus Lupin came crashing into our compartment with several older Slytherins following them. James had been impressed with me then because the Slytherins saw me and left muttering 'that was Joe Hunt's little sister, one of the twins. They're always in the Prophet with their mum.' At that point James turned to me and said 'I think we're going to be very good friends Miss Hunt.'

My brother, Joe, was nine years older than me and had started playing professional quidditch before he'd left Hogwarts, he played for the Chudley Canons. He was their star beater; he'd just retired though after being knocked off his broom at 250 ft off the ground. Our mother decided that she didn't want him playing any more. Instead he was at Hogwarts training to be a Transfiguration professor, the training could take up to five years or more, which meant he would be there at least until my fifth year, oh the joy.

Anyway back to the topic, I was just about to introduce you to my friends.

Gabby was the blond, bubbly one who'd been crushing on Remus since second year when she 'started' and he'd given her some of his chocolate because he'd heard it helped, this was a big deal to Gabby because most boys, and grown men, would have cringed and shrunk away in disgust and suggested a trip to the Hospital Wing. I've gone off topic again. She didn't think that Remus would ever like her because he went for people like Lily Evans; I assured her at the time that this was ridiculous, and that Remus would never go out with Lily Evans. A week later he asked Lily out. That was in third year and it was a tense couple of weeks for us. James hated Remus for 'stealing his girl' and Gabby despised Lily because she'd been right about Remus. Us girls never recovered from the split in the dorm, Lily began to think highly of herself because Remus chose her and she was the first one of us to get a boyfriend. Susie and I took Gabby's side while Dorcas and Alice took Lily's, although the four of us got on quite well. The teams we chose in our third year just stuck and those were the teams we were in for all the little fights and arguments. It didn't help things that Sirius Black was a little bit in love with Gabby, she was just his type; gorgeous, blond, bubbly, outgoing, a Gryffindor. So she was sure Remus would never even look at her.

Susie was always a bit of a mystery to all of us. Even to Gabby and me, her best friends, most people saw her as a little strange. Her first love interest was Xenophilius Lovegood, which went on from Christmas in third year until the beginning of fifth year. She broke up with him because during the careers meeting he told Professor Flitwick, his head of house, that he was going to search for a bunch of creatures that no one had heard of, or could even prove existed, and write all about them to inform the Wizarding World about them. She thought that he was crazy and told him to get real and consider a real job, when he refused to even think about it she broke up with him. And to say we were all relieved would be a huge understatement. She came back from Christmas break that year all loved up with Frank Longbottom, the gorgeously mysterious Gryffindor boy from the year above, we soon found out that his mysteriousness was actually shyness because he would hardly talk in front of us. He'd moved in next door to her that summer, but she hadn't noticed him because she was still with Xenophilius. He'd noticed her though and had heard about her break up with Lovegood and asked her out on the second day of break. That caused problems again because Alice Yates had liked him for a while an was convinced we knew, which we didn't because of the whole never speaking to each other thing after the Gabby – Remus – Lily love triangle. Susie was gorgeous as well; she had a straight nose, high cheekbones, pretty sparkling blue eyes, long legs, and long brown hair. The only reason she didn't get more male attention was her 'interesting' personality quirks.

We became fast friends in first year, once we were all sorted into Gryffindor; we'd all been a bit quiet on the train because we didn't want to get too close to people who would be going to a different house for the next seven years. We also became friends with the Gryffindor boys; James Potter, Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, Peter Pettigrew, and Oliver Johnson. I sometimes felt a little sorry for Oli because the other four were as close as brothers and they tended to leave him out of things. He was all right with it for the most part though because he hung around with the twins in the year above; Gideon and Fabian Prewett and their other friend Frank Longbottom, who were practically famous for their pranks, which of course, the marauders were set on topping.

I guess since I'm introducing people I should probably introduce the boys too.  
>Remus was the sweet one, and the smart one; if you ever needed help with anything he would be the one to help. I was the closest to him out of us girls and he confided in me, something that I have never told anyone, until now. It was second year and he was worried about something, when I asked him he told me that it was something that he hadn't told the boys, or anyone else, he told me that he was a werewolf and he was sure tat the boys were going to find out somehow, or that they already had because they were being distant with him. I was shocked at the news but promised not to tell. He'd thought I would be freaked out about it and run to get the pitchforks; he didn't understand when I assured him I wouldn't. I understood why he was so shy, he was afraid of people finding out and shunning him.<p>

Sirius black was the ladies man, he was gorgeous but he knew it, it was like he'd spent his whole life being pampered and treated like a prince, which I knew, was in fact the case. There isn't much I can say about Sirius, he never liked me much, I used to think it was because I never fell for him like all the other girls but that didn't make sense because neither did Susie or Gabby. I know why now, but I won't tell you now because it'll come up later.

Peter… I'd always found him really creepy, but he was nice enough. People always found it hard to understand how he fell in with the marauders because he wasn't as good looking as them and needed more time and help to master spells than they did. I always thought that was a little shallow, so what if he isn't as pretty to look at? he's still a nice person, even if a little wet. So what if he practically worshipped James and Sirius? These same people often wondered how such a quiet, sweet, well-behaved boy as Remus ended up with friends like James and Sirius but why does that matter? I'll tell you all of the answers to these questions later.

Oli Johnson, like I said I felt sorry for him sometimes but he was happy enough with the twins and Frank in the evenings and he had us when they were in detention, or planning something that would end with them in detention. There isn't much else I can say about Oli, except that he's an amazing seeker.

Frank was like Remus in most ways, except he wasn't a werewolf, wasn't as studious, and was considered more outgoing, while still being pretty shy. Like all the other boys, he was extremely good looking but he kept his boyish good looks for longer before his features sharpened to those of a man. There isn't much I can write about Frank either because he wasn't with us that much.

James on the other hand I could write rolls and rolls of parchment about, describing to you the way he smells of outdoors, and woods, and freshly cut grass, and something else that I've always found really comforting but have never been able to identify. Or how his hair is just perfect, the way it falls messily into his perfect hazel eyes, or the way he flicks it away or the way that whenever I see him I just want to run my fingers through it. He plays quidditch, he's the reason I joined the team, despite my mother's wishes for me to never touch a broom. He told me that it would probably run in my family considering who my dad was (captain of the Cannons) before my brother was born, and who my brother is. He helps Peter with his transfiguration work, because it's his best subject and Peter's worst, also no one else has the patience needed for the task. Gabby was supposed to tutor him in fifth year before OWLs but she got frustrated and hexed him. He is an illegal animagus because it means that Remus doesn't have to be alone, Sirius and Peter are as well. James is a beautiful pure white stag, Sirius is a big black dog, and Peter is a rat. James Potter has only two flaws, one he takes things too far, pranks and such, but since fifth year he has calmed down a lot. His second flaw is the fact that he is totally head-over-heals in love with Lily Evans.

While I was writing this I realised that there are and have been quite a few love triangles occurring in Gryffindor. Love triangles that people are, for the most part, completely unaware that they're in.

At this point Gabby would be bugging me to write about myself, that is if she knew I was writing about our lives at Hogwarts. But anyway, here goes. I'm one half of a pair; my sister goes to Beuxbatons in France. I am a natural brunette but I usually wear my hair bleached blonde because I got bored of brown and I hated it when people came up to me calling me by my sister's name. I play quidditch, I'm a chaser alongside James, we work well together along with our third chaser, a girl in third year called Lesley Reed. I play for two reasons, one; because James said I would be good, and two; because Lily Evans is terrified of flying. I'm a pureblood, but I have no prejudices, I don't hate Lily because she's a muggle born, I hate her because James loves her. My parents are both famous so my sister and me are constantly photographed (another reason that I changed my hair) even though we've never done anything extraordinary. It got worse once Joe got famous too. They expect big things from us. I eat far too much treacle tart at meal times, and too much ice cream, and I've recently discovered a long lost love for yellow jelly. Oh and I'm in love with James Potter.

This story really begins in out seventh year; I just thought I'd tell you about the people involved. Well the ones I like anyway.


	2. Chapter 2

I watched as James looked at Lily with that pleading look in his eyes, but I knew that it wasn't going to end the way he wanted it to. We were in our seventh year and he was asking Lily Evans out for the last time, he'd promised me last night, that whatever her answer today he wasn't going to ask her again.

"Lily, would you please just give me a chance? You don't know me; you just think you do. Please, just one date and I won't bother you again." Lily looked at him for a long moment and I could see the excitement building on his face, in his eyes. She was making it look like she was actually considering his words, but everyone apart form James knew that she wasn't. I could see it, and from the way that Sirius and Remus were glaring at Lily they could see it too, of course Peter wouldn't see anything until someone told him what was going on. I could hardly bare to watch it, she smiled at him and James looked like he was going to faint with delight, but then she spoke,

"No Potter, I won't go out with you. Stop asking me." I saw his shoulders slump, his whole body just kind of deflated, it was such a pathetic sight to see.

"Okay Lily, I won't bother you any more." I nearly wanted to cry as he spoke these words to her.

He walked straight past where the other marauders were standing, not even noticing them standing there. Their glares intensified and everyone else in the corridor looked confused, of course as soon as they had seen Lily and James together they had slowed down their paces or stopped completely to watch the show, how was James going to embarrass her today? But he didn't, he spoke quietly so that only she could hear him, well I could too but that's more to do with me than with the volume of his voice. Now they didn't understand, never once in the six years that James had been asking Lily out had he reacted to her rejection like that, usually he would just make a joke and try again straight away, he had never walked away looking all dejected and pathetic. I moved from where I was standing and glared at Lily as I shoved past her, I heard her shout as I did,

"What's your problem Hunt?" I just turned and glared at her some more before answering,

"Right now, my biggest problem is you." I heard her little followers laugh at my response apparently my anger amused them, but Lily looked a little… something, it was either sorry or worried, maybe both.

I went over to where the marauders were standing, Sirius' glare shifted onto me as I approached. I rolled my eyes and ignored him and looked at Remus,

"I've got this one, go wait in the common room or something." He smiled and nodded and started ushering the others back up to Gryffindor tower. Once they were around the corner I heard Sirius hiss at Remus,

"Why is she sticking her nose in again?" Remus' only reply was a light chuckle; he knew I could still hear them. James was sitting under the big oak tree where he and the boys study in the summer before the exams start, well pretend to so they aren't bothered by their professors for not doing any work. He was just staring out at the lake, not really seeing as he watched the giant squid's tentacles dance across the surface.

He didn't acknowledge me as I sat down next to him and held his hand as some sort of comfort to him. We just sat for a long time, it was well past curfew before either of us spoke, I knew it was always better to let him speak first when he was this upset, not that it happened very often.

"I really thought she was going to say yes this time Riley." I squeezed his hand,

"I know James, but she doesn't see what a great person you are. You've changed over the summer, grown up, and if she can't see that then, and I know you don't want to hear it, she isn't worth it." He squeezed back,

"I know, I think I'm finally seeing what you've all been trying to tell me since second year. She isn't worth the hassle if she can't see what an amazingly handsome, intelligent, mature, grown up man I have become." I turned my head to see that he was grinning at me and I couldn't help but laugh. I hit him lightly on the shoulder with my free hand and rested my head on it; he put his arm around my shoulders, "Thank you Riley, for just sitting with me. The guys would have gotten bored and tried to make me talk to them about it. You're too good to me Miss Hunt." I sat up and grinned at him,

"I know I am Mr. Potter. You ready to go back to the common room, I must say it's getting rather chilly out here." He nodded and pulled me up by the hand he still held and we made our way back into the castle.

Of course we had forgotten that it was a little after curfew, and it was Slytherin's day to patrol, and although I am a prefect and James is Head Boy they don't tend to worry too much about that when reporting students to Slughorn or McGonagall.

"Didn't take you long to bounce back after today's rejection did it Potter? Looks like you've already found a replacement for the Mudblood. At least this one's pure, even if she is a muggle lover." Lovely end to the day; Snape, Regulus, and Narcissa come to try and scare us. Or maybe to goad us to fight with them. It was working well on James, considering they had just insulted Lily and me in the same sentence. I know it sounds bigheaded to say it but I'm pretty important to this boy, sorry man, as he had claimed earlier. He started towards them, wand already raised and about to retort, or send a curse. I still had his hand in mine and I pulled him back towards me, his head whipped around to see me standing there with that look on my face, he lowered his wand and we started our trip back to the common room again. They called after us but we ignored them, I'm not sure if James even heard them but there you go.

Remus, Sirius, and Peter had obviously waited up for us in the common room, I say us but they waited for James. Sirius had some issues with me but I couldn't be certain why. When they saw us Sirius and Remus jumped up to make sure he wasn't going to start shouting or crying or something like that, I wondered why Peter didn't get up when the others did but then I heard a small snore which explained it. James smiled at them and they sat down again, James joining them. I started to head up to my dorm,

"Aren't you staying Hunt?" I was confused, that was Sirius' voice, why would he care?

"No, I'm going to go to bed. Night all." I bent over the back of the couch and wrapped my arms around James' neck and kissed him on the cheek, then went and did the same to Remus. I patted Peter on the head; he'd been woken up when Sirius sat on him, forgetting that he was there. I paused at Sirius and then patted him on the head too, though a little more hesitantly and awkwardly, he kind of glared at me and it made me and the others crack up laughing.

I grinned at them once more and went up to my dorm, when I got there Lily was sitting on my bed cross legged, clearly waiting for me. I looked around the room and did a double take when I saw that, it probably looked pretty funny, it usually does when I see other people do it. I saw that she was really sitting on my bed and frowned, I didn't understand it, why would she be waiting for me, but the more pressing matter was why was she sitting on my bed to wait for me.

"You're back late Hunt. Where've you been?" I was confused; surely she hadn't waited up for me to ask me where I'd been all night? She shouldn't even have noticed that I wasn't there, unless she wanted something.

"I was sitting outside with James. Got a problem with that?" Lily just shook her head and went to her own bed and pulled the hangings shut. I was left just standing in the middle of the dorm with this stupid confused look on my face; it was a look that I didn't enjoy having on my own face. Seeing it on other people's faces I could deal with but it was unnatural on mine. I got ready for bed slowly, by the time I actually got into bed I was beyond tired.

In the morning I was woken up at about five by Lily, she was running around the dorm, grabbing books and items of uniform. This confused me more than anything that had happened last night, why would she be rushing around like she was late, unless… I snatched up my watch from my nightstand, the frigging clock stopped again; the real time was five to nine. I scrambled out of bed and did a hair charm to make my hair fall into it's flicky layers how I liked it and another charm for a light cover of make-up, mascara, light foundation, a small amount of eye liner, and a coat of lip gloss. All the while I was shoving on my uniform and hunting for my other shoe,

"You could have woken me up when you realised y'know."

"Why would I do that?" I rolled my eyes, tying my tie and trying to get my shoes on my feet at the same time,

"What exactly have I ever done to you Evans?"

"You wouldn't have gotten me up until you were just leaving the dorm."

"That's not true. I would have woken you up when I was getting my shoe from under your bed. You would still have plenty of time to get ready." I summoned all the books I would need for the morning to my bed and shoved them into my bag along with quills, parchment, and ink. And I was ready. "See you later Evans." I grinned as I ran down the stairs; she was still looking for that book of hers that was under the couch in the common room, silly girl.

James gave me a strange look as I puffed into my seat in McGonagall's room; I was never late. Lucky for me there was some kind of drama with some fifth year Gryffindors in the Great Hall this morning so I wasn't in trouble. McGonagall wasn't even there yet. Lily got there about and minute and a half after I did and McGonagall arrived just after Lily. She looked suspicious of our flushed faces and out of breath breathing but she couldn't say anything because for all she knew we were on time, my lucky day. James looked at Lily while McGonagall started to explain the work for the day, which he had no doubt already mastered. As he looked at her he wore a strange expression, usually it would be one that showed his love for her but that day was different, he looked hurt and confused, and it broke my heart to see that look on his face.

"Miss Hunt, pay attention please. Human transfiguration is tricky enough, I shouldn't need to tell you that it is extremely risky and if I don't think you have been paying enough attention I won't be able to let you try it." What? Since when was I not paying attention? Half an hour had passed already? Oops…

"Sorry professor, just tired I guess." Lily snorted and James glared at her, and for some reason seeing that made me smile a little bit. McGonagall seemed to accept that since she carried on with her lecture. I speed read through the chapter on human transfiguration. I would be able to do this in my sleep. But maybe I would try it out while conscious first, just in case.

"Okay, I think that's enough explanation. Pair up and practise." I looked around the room; my two girl friends were paired up already. Remus was with Sirius. Peter wasn't around. Lily was with Frank Longbottom. And James was making his way over to me. I smiled at him,

"So d'you want to go first? Or should I since your concentration isn't all that great today." I reacted in a very mature way and stuck my tongue out at him and motioned for him to go ahead, I would need a demonstration of the spell before I tried it.

"Verto ut muris." I concentrated on the wand movement before I felt myself shrinking, I looked up at James and he pulled a mirror out of his pocket and showed me the image of a tiny field mouse where I was standing. He changed me back and I grinned at him. It was my turn, I pulled out my wand and pointed it at him with a little extra flair to make him laugh and said the spell,

"Verto ut canis." James slowly started to turn into a big black and brown dog, he started to run around barking and then Sirius was transformed into a dog as well and they were both running around the classroom playing and barking. It made me laugh but McGonagall was not as impressed as she should have been to have such a skilled class who were able to get the tricky human transfiguration thing first go.

Not much really happened after that, school became just as boring as you would expect it to be, well except that we get to play with wands and magic and other stuff that even I wouldn't have ever expected when I was growing up, and I was used to magic. So Halloween was coming up and with it a Masquerade Ball was also approaching. I was looking forward to it; I figured that it would be a good time. The professors had decided that it should all be anonymous, that no one should know whom anyone was. I wasn't sure whether that was a good idea or not but I wasn't going to argue with the higher powers. Besides the prefects had already voted that it was a good idea.


	3. Chapter 3

Lily was going mad in the weeks leading up to the Halloween Ball, I mean literally mad. She could be seen shouting and screaming at the prefects who were caught slacking, to her slacking was taking more than one ten minute break in a period of three hours work. But at least she wasn't just working herself to death, oh no, she was dragging the rest of us down with her. It's crazy how much work I've been doing, Lily decided that she needed to delegate. That left Remus and me to look after the Gryffindor prefects who didn't seem to know a thing about what they were doing. We were in charge of decorations, and that on top of school work was a lot of my free time just gone. My professors didn't accept 'but I was helping the fifth year prefects to decide between pink and orange balloons for the Halloween Ball', which is fair enough because EVERYONE knows that Halloween is orange and black, not white and pale pink.

I just didn't know what else I had to do, I had already been researching spells and charms to speed up the decorating process and given out lists of them to the Gryffindor prefects to learn. I had sketched out what the hall was going to look like and it had been approved at the last meeting. I had nothing left to do, and neither did the prefects. She wasn't giving me a moment's peace, I hadn't spoken to my friends since the train ride, and I wasn't with them for long because I had to go to the prefects meeting. They'd stopped bothering to try to talk to me because as soon as we sat down Lily would be there to send me to do some meaningless little task that she was just too lazy to do herself.

James was off limits now because he was always at Lily's side, not through his own choice but because Lily would go bonkers when he wasn't close enough for her to panic to. But despite the fact that it was her own fault that they were constantly together she was still treating him like he was an idiot. Remus thought that she just didn't want me to be spending time with him, having a good time when he was supposed to be in love with her. He thought that Lily had gotten so used to the idea that James would always be there it came as a shock when he really did stop asking her out. And as a result of her treatment of him, I started to hate her. And although I hadn't spoken to him, I could see that James was either getting fed up of it, realising that we were all right, or starting to get slightly depressed. I really hoped it wasn't the latter one.

It was finally the day of the Halloween ball and everyone had the day off to get ready for the ball. Well everyone but the prefects, we were getting the ball ready for everyone.

"HUNT, WOULD YOU DO SOME WORK?" I rolled my eyes, okay so my wand had been drooping for like half an hour, but my arm was tired. She would know about it if she were actually helping, instead of just yelling at me the whole time. I grinned as James caught my eye and came over.

"Merlin, she's annoying." He nodded and grinned at me, he had that look in his eye. The one he would get when he was planning something with the boys. I wasn't sure but I figured this was probably a good thing for him. He'd been being distant with them for a while now, and they were starting to get a little peeved about it. He winked at me and turned to the hall. It was nearly done; there were just a few finishing touches to be made.

"Everyone, can I have your attention? Since the hall is nearly done to perfection I think it would be best if we let our lovely ladies make a move and go to get ready for the ball." Lily's face was priceless as all the girls grinned at James and piled out of the doors. I gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek and left to get ready with Susie and Gabby.

Gabby and Susie waited for me before getting ready, they knew that they only had to do their hair and make up since I had told them about the nifty little charm I found. All you have to do it walk through your gender's door and it will dress you in a costume complete with a matching mask, and the clothes will be flattering to your body because the charm takes that into account. It was perfect, I had already tried it out as had Lily and her little friends. Lily was happy with the results but she was pretty irritated that I found it before her, since charms was 'her subject'. Everyone was having trouble with how to keep the ball anonymous, there was no other way.

They were surprised to see me; I had told them that I would be back about half an hour before the ball started but there I was at least two hours before expected. They grinned at me when I came in, "Where's Lily?" I shrugged; my guess was she couldn't bear to leave the hall for the boys to finish.

"Probably watching the boys to make sure they don't mess up the hall. You didn't think it was her idea for us to leave early did you?" we sat just talking for about an hour before Ella jumped up realising that we were there to be getting ready, not to be sitting around talking like old times.

By the time we were all ready the doors of the Great Hall had already opened so we didn't have to wait around for too long before we got through the doors. We went through holding hands because I found a loophole to the charm when I was researching, it would mean that were would all be put in costumes but we would be able to find each other inside, we would still be holding onto each other. It would also mean that we would be in similar style costumes, which happened to be Disney films.

Gabby was in a tight fitted ankle length green skirt and a purple tube top, which left her stomach on show, her skin stayed its usually pale colour and her hair turned a gorgeous red colour, she was clearly Ariel from the Little Mermaid.

Susie was in a short green strapless dress with wings attached to the back, and matching green pumps, her hair was changed from its usual deep brown colour to blond and it was tied up in bun at the back of her head, with a thick side fringe hanging down, she was Tinkerbell from Peter Pan.

I was in a long purple skirt with a darker purple shawl tied around my waist, with a green and yellow corset that came up just under my bust and a white off the shoulder blouse underneath it. I had gold bangles on my wrists and a gold anklet on my ankle, I wasn't given shoes but I had a feeling that would be fine. My hair was turned black and changed to big curls, with a pink scarf tied in, my eyes were big and green and my skin was a light caramel colour. I was Esmerelda, the gypsy girl from the Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Since the ball had already started that band was already playing but people were still milling around trying to find their friends, something, which probably wouldn't be an easy task. But because we already had each other we went to dance straight away. After only about ten minutes we each had a partner to dance with but we mostly stuck together. An hour or two in Susie stopped to catch her breath and Gabby and me followed her over to get drinks, both of us were desperate for drinks.

I had just set my down my empty cup when someone grabbed my hand and pulled me back towards the dancers. Since we were seventh years the dancing was pretty intimate but also because it was a school event there was only light grinding going on, it wasn't like what happened on the dance floor of the marauder's parties. I was having a great time with him when the song changed to something a lot slower, but instead of walking away like I assumed he would he spun me around so and started swaying me to the new beat. We started talking during this slower song and I knew it was James as soon as he spoke, I figured he must have known it was me, considering we'd been best friends for a good six years.

Even after that song finished we kept dancing, and talking, neither of us danced with anyone else. It was amazing because during that first slow dance I saw realisation and recognition flicker in his eyes, he knew it was me. After about twenty more songs we both needed a breather so we went to sit at one of the little tables and kept talking and laughing and holding hands across the table. I wouldn't have thought it would have been that comfortable to talk to him like that, like a couple.

The band announced the last song of the night, it was a slow one and James led me back onto the dance floor, in the six years we'd been friends he'd never mentioned to me that he could dance, he was so graceful and even though I didn't know the steps to what he was doing it didn't matter because he knew how to lead.

It was nearly time for the unmasking and at the end of the last song of the night he looked straight into my eyes and drew me closer to him, when he kissed me it was the most amazing thing I've ever felt, it was like fireworks were going off in my head, I know it sounds clichéd but that's how it was. As the countdown to midnight started Gabby and Susie whisked me away from him, so that we could all be changed back together.

I lost sight of him in the crowds of people counting down to the moment they would find out who they'd spent the night with, their new friends, who they would probably be embarrassed to be seen with the next day. But that was okay because he knew it was me, so I would just have to talk to him in the morning and see what was going to happen next.

Gabby and Susie were excited for me when I told them what happened in the dormitory that night, we were all sitting on my bed with the curtains drawn and a silencing charm cast over them so that Lily and her friends wouldn't be able to hear us, they both started squealing with delight. I went to sleep happy that night and I dreamt about what was going to happen the next morning when I saw him again and we talked about what was going to happen with us now.

In the morning I got up early and showered and got dressed, I wasn't usually a morning person but once I woke up I couldn't get back to sleep, I was too happy. Finally he knew how I felt and judging from last night, he felt the same way, I just hoped that it wasn't just because of the dance, but because he actually liked me. I got down to the common room before anyone else and waited for James to come down from the boys' dormitory. I didn't have to wait long because only about half an hour after I sat down James came down the stairs grinning like a fool; it was the same grin I knew was plastered across my own face. "Morning Riley."

"Morning James." For some reason I couldn't think of anything to say to him, something that had never happened to me.

"Good night last night?" he was going to play it that way, pretending nothing happened to make sure I like him, he could never just talk outright about things like this. I played along,

"It was really good thanks. How was your night?" he sighed in dreamy contentedness,

"It was amazing Riley, so good you wouldn't believe it if I told you." My grin widened, I hadn't thought I could get any happier than when I woke up that morning, I was wrong. Hearing him say that made me ten times happier than that.

"I'm sure I'd believe it, why don't you try me?"

"I danced with Lily all night, she knew it was me. I know she recognised me, I could see it in her eyes. She looked amazing, well more amazing than usual. She had this big curly black hair and tan skin, but it was her eyes. They were bigger but still the same colour of green…" my eyes are blue-green, not the colour they were last night, not the same as Lily's "…and she kissed me back!" I missed a lot of what he was saying, I felt my eyes fill up with tears but I was determined not to let them fall in front of him. I smiled and he didn't notice the tears.


	4. Chapter 4

"I wonder where she went. Was she still up in your dormitory when you left?" the truth was it didn't look like she'd been in the dormitory at all the night before; she wasn't there when I got back and she wasn't there when I left this morning. I couldn't tell James that though, not when he was thought he'd spent that amazing evening with her, not when he was so ecstatic about her kissing him. I shook my head,

"Maybe she left early, for breakfast. She wasn't there when I came down." James nodded,

"Well I think I'm going to go get some breakfast, you going to come too?"

"No I ate earlier, I've been up for a while. I was still pretty jazzed from the ball y'know." He nodded again then looked apologetic,

"I never asked how your night was."

"I had the most amazing night, I can't even describe how good it was." James smiled but my eyes filled with tears again and it didn't feel like I would be able to stop them this time.

"I thought you were going to go look for Evans?" James almost jumped to his feet at the sound of her name, it would have been funny if I didn't feel the way I did about him,

"That I am." He grinned and hugged me, after I stood to go upstairs, but it felt awkward, different to how it used to be. I wondered if he could feel the change too, "I'll see you later?" I nodded, not trusting my voice to stay as strong as I needed it to be, and he let go of me.

As soon as the portrait closed I ran upstairs, the tears had started to fall already and I didn't need people to see that. Susie was still asleep, it was one of those quirks we loved about her, she had to get exactly nine hours of sleep every single night, and she just wouldn't wake up until she'd had them, and we were up really late the night before, because I couldn't stop talking about my night with James, and how it would all be amazing now that he knew how I felt and seemed to feel the same way.

Gabby was just coming out of the bathroom using her wand to dry her hair when I flung myself face first into my pillows. She heard me crying and immediately panicked, "What's happened? Is your family? James? Remus? Tell me what's happened!" She sat down on the edge of my bed and rested her hand on my back, I couldn't tell her; I just couldn't bring myself to say the words. I shook my head and curled up in a ball on my side. "Come on Riley, you'll feel better once you've told someone." It was the same thing I said to her whenever she was feeling down about anything.

I sat up, still in my ball, and leant against the headboard of my bed. "I spoke to James."

"Oh sweetie, what did he say?" she had a sympathetic look on her face and I had to look away. I looked down at my toes picking at the chipped nail varnish I found there,

"He said he had an amazing night, the best time in the world, better than he could have imagined." Gabby looked confused,

"But surely that's a good thing." I nodded, showing that I agreed with her,

"It would have been a great thing if he hadn't thought he'd spent the whole ball with Lily Evans. He couldn't stop smiling, thinking that she was finally going to accept him and go out with him." I fell back down to my side and curled myself up tighter.

"What did he say when you told him it was you?"

"Nothing, I didn't tell him. I came up here after he left to go find her and talk about their amazing night together." Gabby jumped to her feet,

"Riley, don't you think he's going to be a bit confused when Lily doesn't have a clue what he's talking about. You would expect her to remember it if it was that amazing. He's going to be crushed when she turns him down again!"

"Serves him right for thinking it was her in the first place!" Gabby retook her place on the edge of my bed and resumed stroking small circles on my back,

"Riley, you don't really mean that and we both know it. you need to go and find him before he talks to Lily and she breaks his heart when she denies the night ever happened." I sat up and nodded, I knew she was right, but it didn't mean I had to like it,

"D'you know something Gabby? I really hate it when you're right because it usually means I have to go and do something that I really don't want to do." Gabby had the audacity to grin at that,

"Off you go then. Actually if you wait for two second I'll come with you, I'm starving." I rolled my eyes at her ability to be hungry all the time but waited anyway.

We went back down to the common room discussing what I was going to say to him, Gabby was understandably confused when I turned up the boys' staircase instead of heading out of the portrait hole. "I thought you said he was going to go look for her at breakfast?"

"I did but that was half an hour ago, I'll never find him without another marauder." Gabby understood now. I knocked on the door and waited until on of them answered, thankfully luck was on my side and it was Remus who opened the door.

"I need your help." Remus nodded and stepped out of the room; presumably because Sirius had some girl in there he didn't want us to see. Either that or Sirius was sleeping naked again and he didn't want to put us through the mental scarring again.

"What d'you need?"

"I need you to help me find James. He went off looking for Evans this morning and I need to talk to him before he speaks to her."

"Why d'you think I'll be able to find him if you can't?" the question had me stumped, I had just assumed he would know exactly where James was.

"Because! You're a marauder, don't you guys have some sort of tracking sensor so you can always find each other?" Remus chuckled and shook his head,

"You're best bet it probably the great hall, the kitchens, under the old oak tree, or in the library." Gabby gave him a sceptical look at the last suggestion,

"Where would you go if you were stalking Lily Evans?" I thanked Remus for his help and he slipped back into the dormitory, barely opening the door, and the wince that crossed his face when he looked in confirmed my suspicions that Sirius was in fact sleeping naked with the curtains open again.

I went down to the great hall with Gabby so she could go to breakfast, when I saw that James wasn't in there I immediately left for the library; it didn't seem likely that Evans would be in the kitchens, an out of bounds part of the castle. When I got there I looked all around and when I was giving up hope of finding them I saw them in the back corner of the library talking, Evans looked like she would rather be doing anything else than talking to James Potter. I got a little bit closer so that I could hear what was being said, "I thought you said you weren't going to bother me any more Potter." He must have only just found her, if only I'd come straight here rather than going to the great hall first, or if I'd just gone straight down to the great hall to look for him instead of talking to Remus. I thought she was going to start shouting at him so I cast a muffliato charm around the three of us so they wouldn't be disturbed but I would still be able to hear them.

"That was before last night."

"Why? What happened last night to make it so special?" James looked upset at that,

"What d'you mean what happened? We kissed Lily, and you were kissing me back and it was absolutely amazing, we spend the whole of the ball together."

"I wasn't with you at the ball Potter."

"Yes you were. I know it was you, and you recognised me, why are you pretending you didn't?"

"I really don't know what you're talking about Potter. I was with the same person all night, and it wasn't you. I was with him until the unmasking."

"Until your friends dragged you away from me."

"No Potter, I was with him until the very end of the ball, I saw him being unmasked. Then we went for a walk in the grounds." James looked confused,

"Then who was it? I was so sure it was you." Lily shrugged, looking pleased that he wasn't going to bother her any more,

"I don't know. Maybe you should ask someone else; maybe someone who saw you with her…" she shoved past him and I ducked out of sight, James sank down to the floor and his head went into his hands. I stayed hidden until I was sure he wasn't crying.

I left it a few minutes before I went and sat down next to him against the bookshelves. "How do you always know where to find me Riley? It's almost like you've got a map to me."

"That would make these things a lot simpler, and you wouldn't have had to go through that with Lily if I did. I'm sorry James." James looked at me,

"You saw that? I didn't think anyone was around, that's why I spoke to her here. I didn't want her to think I was trying to embarrass her."

"I'm the only one around and she didn't see me." he didn't say anything so I continued, "James I need to talk to you about last night," James nodded to show he was listening, "It was me, I was the girl you were dancing with all night." He just looked at me with a look on his face that broke my heart,

"Why didn't you tell me? Why did you let me embarrass myself with Lily while you stood there and watched? She was starting to treat me like a friend before this, she was talking to me like she actually wanted to; she was coming to me to talk not the other way round. YOU'VE RUINED THAT NOW, HUNT!" he was on his feet now, and tears were falling from my eyes. He noticed that and stopped shouting, I thought he was going to sit down and talk to me about it quietly, "Don't talk to me any more Hunt." Then he left me there. I pulled my knees up to my chest and dropped my forehead onto them and cried until I didn't have any more tears left.

I stayed there for about half an hour before I pulled myself together a little bit. I didn't feel like going back to the common room, and having to tell the story to Gabby and Susie, or to deal with the glares from Sirius, and now James as well. I made my way outside to the opposite side of the lake to where I usually sat with James. It would be harder for anyone to find me over here. I sat staring into the lake, wondering what the day would have been like if I had just told James straight away that it was me he was with, not Lily.

Would he have had a different reaction to not wanting me to speak to him any more, sure he probably would have been nicer about it, probably wouldn't have shouted at me. He wouldn't have accepted it though, he wouldn't have wanted to be with me, if he would have then it shouldn't have made a difference that I didn't tell him straight away, if he wanted to be with me then he wouldn't have been so excited about it being Lily that he was with.

I sat out there for hours; I didn't notice when it suddenly got a lot colder, or when it started to get dark. I didn't notice when it started to rain, I felt numb to it all; I couldn't feel any of it. It was just me and the squid's dancing tentacles. 


	5. Chapter 5

I really had no idea how long I'd been sitting out there by the lake until Gabby and Susie appeared out of the darkness and sat down on either side of me bringing the mouthwatering scent of fried chicken with them. It was like I came out of a kind of trance and suddenly realised that I was starving, freezing, and really rather uncomfortable- I had no idea that my bum could hurt that much from just sitting without having fallen down first. Susie cast a warming charm around the three of us and Gabby put a big plate of fried chicken in my hands. This is why I love them; they always know exactly what I need to make me feel better. After I'd eaten way too much of the delicious chicken Gabby started to speak,

"Riley, what happened? I thought you went to tell James about last night but you've been gone for a whole day, you missed dinner and we all know how unlike you that is." I smiled at her words but it even felt fake so I can only imagine how it looked,

"I did tell him but when I got to him he was already speaking to Evans and she crushed him once again. Afterwards I told him that it was me at the ball and he went crazy and started yelling at me and telling me that everything was ruined and how it was all my fault." By the time I had told them this much I was in tears and finding it hard to get the rest of my words out, "And then he told me not to talk to him anymore and stormed off." Gabby wrapped her arms around me and pulled me close to her, it surprised me that it actually did make me feel a little bit better to be held like that.

"It'll be okay Riley, he'll come around. In fact he's probably sitting up in the common room beating himself up over shouting at you, or he's looking for you. Come on, lets go back up to the common room and get warm, that warming charm is starting to wear off and I'm pretty cold." I smiled again at her attempt to make me feel better but shook my head,

"If he was looking for me this would be one of the first places he would come. He doesn't want anything to do with me now." We went back up to the common room and the marauders were there in front of the fire, in the good squishy armchairs talking and laughing like nothing had happened, like James hadn't just lost one of his best friends.

I couldn't stand it and went straight past them and up to our dorm, the girls took longer to get up there and I was already in my pjs and curled up in bed by the time they joined me,

"See I told you, he hates me." Susie, who had been quiet up until this point, spoke up,

"Well can you really blame him?" I saw Gabby shoot her a look, that I'm pretty sure I was meant to miss, it was a look that said 'what the hell do you think you're doing?' I was just shocked that my usually supportive Susie was taking James' side in this rather than being there for me when I needed her,

"We've been friends for six years, he should know by now that I would never do anything to intentionally cause problems for him with Evans.. despite how wrong for him I think she is. I've only ever tried to help him to win her over, who was it who convinced him to stop asking her out in front of everyone and embarrassing her? Oh yeah, that was me." This time Gabby made no attempt to hide the look she threw at Susie, this one was telling her not to respond but Susie either didn't read it right or didn't care and really wanted to get out what she was thinking.

"Well, he knows what you think of Evans and that you don't think he should be with her so maybe he thinks that you finally decided to do something about it rather than just telling him what you think." I couldn't believe what she was saying to me, how could she think that James thought that little of me that he would believe I would intentionally do something like this. "I mean if you had just told him before then the thing with Evans wouldn't have happened and he'd probably be off in a corner of the castle with you instead of in the common room with the marauders telling them all about how you betrayed him and shattered his chances with Evans. That's how I see it and that's probably how he sees it too."

"You think I did this on purpose? You think that I let him go off and get his heart stepped on by Evans again for fun?" Susie shook her head,

"No, of course I don't think you did it for fun and you probably didn't do it on purpose-"

"Probably!" Susie just carried on ignoring my interruption,

"but I do think that in some part of your subconscious you thought that once Evans had broken his heart you could tell him that you're the one he had that wonderful evening with and he would be so pleased to have found out who it really was, one of his best friends no less, that he would fall for you and forget all about Evans."

I didn't want to listen to anymore of her theories and told her so before grabbing my wand for the bed side cabinet and leaving the room. The marauders were still downstairs and James and Sirius looked up as I practically ran past them with the same looks of distaste on their faces and Remus started to stand to follow me but Sirius shook his head signalling that it would be a bad move.

When I was through the portrait hole I realised that I didn't have anywhere to go, it was after curfew so it would be risky to go too far so that ruled out just going for a walk because I wasn't in the mood to deal with Filch. After standing outside the Fat Lady for about ten minutes I remembered about a room that James showed me, the Room of Requirement he called it, that would be perfect; I would be able to stay in there for the night and make some sort of plan about what I was going to do next.

It took me a few tries to actually make the room work and the door show up, the room that I got was a replica of my bedroom at home, my favourite room in the world. I went to my bed and started to think. I didn't know what I was going to do, I had lost my best friend and the boy I loved all because I couldn't admit that he had hoped I was someone else at the ball.

By the time I had come up with what I thought was a good plan, well it was more of a vague idea of what would make things better, it was already getting light outside so I crawled under the covers and went to sleep, hoping that the next day would be better than the previous one.

I didn't wake up until lunch time, I decided to go down to lunch before going to find Gabby and Susie because I would need energy before trying to make things right with Susie. I felt bad about storming out the way that I did, she was right about what James was probably thinking and I shouldn't have gotten mad at her for telling me that, even if it wasn't something I wanted to hear.

The girls were up in the common room, something I was very thankful for because I didn't want to have to hunt them down before apologising and asking for their help. They both went very quiet when I walked over to their table, waiting to see what I was going to say before they said anything themselves, which was promising because they weren't the types to keep things in when they wanted to say something, they were giving me the chance to say my piece first. "I just wanted to say that I'm sorry I stormed out yesterday, I over reacted when you were just telling me what you thought.." Susie looked like she was just going to go back to what she was doing but Gabby delivered her a swift elbow to the ribs so Susie smiled at me an motioned for me to sit down.

"So I'm assuming you have a plan to win him over again?" I nodded in agreement,

"I'm going to get Lily to fall in love with him..." Gabby's eyes just about bugged out of her head and Susie's mouth fell open in shock.

**A/N: okay so this isn't good and I know that.. but I've been staring at it for too long and I have no idea how to make it better. Please help me out in a review, I want to make it a chapter I'm happy with but I don't know how :( **


	6. Chapter 6

It was a week after James and I had our talk in the library and he still had yet to speak a single word to me, he had however managed to throw a few dirty looks my way, as if to remind me that he wasn't over what had happened and he hadn't forgotten that I ruined his life and any chance he ever had with Evans. Although, as Gabby pointed out, that there was never really a chance of him getting her to finally go out with him and she was only speaking to him because it would stop her from freaking out about the Halloween ball when she had somewhere to vent it all to and dump her worries on, and because James was Head Boy he was the perfect candidate because he was partially responsible for the success of the event.

The Saturday after the ball I was on my way to breakfast but just as I was about to go into the Great Hall a hand grabbed my arm and pulled me over to one side. I'm ashamed to say I thought it might have been James and my heart gave a flutter at the idea that he was finally starting to come around and was ready to forgive me. As you can imagine I was extremely disappointed, and rather shocked, to see that the face between me and my breakfast was that of Sirius Black as he stood glaring down at me, "What did you do to James?" I couldn't help the extremely ungraceful snort that escaped me,

"Did you really wait there until I was walking past just so you could ask me that?" the small smile that had been playing on my face fell, "He's your best friend, why don't you ask him yourself? I'm sure he could give you a much better picture of what's wrong with him." his glare intensified as I finished speaking,

"He won't talk about it, he just claims that there's nothing wrong, before storming off somewhere, whenever I ask him. What did you do to James?" I glanced around his shoulder into the Great Hall and found where James was sitting with Remus and Peter, they were laughing and joking like nothing was wrong, like he didn't care that we hadn't spoken in a week. I narrowed my eyes at Black, matching his glare with one of my own,

"What makes you think I did anything to him, besides he looks just fine to me, in fact I would go as far as to say he looks as if everything is right in the world as James Potter knows it." Black let out what can only be described as a derisive laugh, nothing like his usual loud obnoxious bark of laughter,

"What d'you mean he looks fine, he's been moping around with a face so long its practically tripping him and he's been that way ever since the day after the Halloween Ball." I crossed my arms over my chest,

"You mean the Masquerade Ball? Where no one knew who anyone was? What makes you think I have anything to do with that?"

"Because you came to the dorm looking for him the morning after, when he had spent the pretty much the whole night going on and on about how happy he was, he was happy when he left the dorm but then you go looking for him and he comes back miserable."

"He went looking for Evans the morning after the Ball, maybe she shot him down again and that's why he's miserable." Black shook his head with a condescending look on his face,

"If it was Evans he wouldn't be miserable, he would be trying again to get her attention.. and anyway he gave up on her after the last time he asked her out, you're the one who convinced him not to try anymore because she isn't worth it." I looked down at the floor and let the glare slip off my face,

"Look Black, I haven't spoken to him in a week, he doesn't want to talk to me. He looks fine, I doubt there's even anything bothering him."

"If you really believe that then you don't know him as well as you had us all thinking you do, I see it every time I look at him, behind the jokes and laughter that boy is miserable. And I'm blaming you because you claim to know him better than anyone, that he is your best friend and yet you haven't spoken to him in a week and because if you had tried you would know that he isn't happy." I couldn't stop the smile that managed to work its way onto my face "What are you smiling about? I just told you that your best friend is miserable and there you are grinning like an idiot?"

"That isn't what made me smile Black its the way you talk about him, I never realised that you could actually care about someone other than the person you see in the mirror. He's lucky to have a friend like you." I shook my head to clear my thoughts so I could focus on what he had said to me, "But like you said, we haven't spoken in a week, and I can assure you that isn't my doing. He doesn't want to talk to me so there really isn't anything I can do to help you.. or him.. no matter how much I wish I could make everything better, this time I just can't. I'm sorry." to my horror there were tears gathering my eyes again, it was getting ridiculous the amount I was crying over this boy.

The last thing I wanted was for Black to know how much it was bothering me that I couldn't help so I ducked my head and darted under his arm and towards where Gabby and Susie were sitting waiting for me. I looked back to see Black still watching me, he looked as effected by this whole thing as I was and I was genuinely surprised about that. I knew he was loyal to his friends but I never imagined that he would be hurting this much because one of them was upset over something.

I wiped my face to clear the away the few tears that had managed to escape and sat down with my friends so that I could finally have the breakfast it seemed I had been waiting hours for. "So what did Black want?"

"He wanted to know what I did to James and what I was planning on doing to fix it." I answered with a shrug like it was no big deal that Sirius Black had cornered me on my way to breakfast, not only accusing me of harming his best friend but also preventing me from getting to my food, like it was an every day occurrence.

"Okay, well are you aware that pretty much all of the Hufflepuffs and a handful of Ravenclaws are now planning for you to have some kind of painful accident at some point in the near future.. you and Black looked pretty cosy up there." I snorted again in disbelief,

"Trust me there was nothing cosy about it, I practically froze solid from the death looks he was giving me the whole time." Gabby nodded and accepted this,

"did you tell him about your plan?" I shook my head giving her a look which clearly questioned her sanity,

"Why on Earth would I do that? He'd tell James. Or worse, he'd tell Remus and Pettigrew and Evans would find out and try and kill me." Susie rolled her eyes,

"I'm sure she wouldn't. And besides Black might actually be able to help you, he's James' best friend- other best friend" she corrected herself when she caught my glare, "and you guys aren't exactly speaking right now so maybe he could set things up with James and you could get Evans there... I don't know, maybe you could work together and sort this quicker than you could on your own." I slammed my goblet down on the table with enough force to draw the attention of the people sitting near us, and Remus, and said in my most forceful, but still kind of quiet voice,

"I do not need Sirius Black's help with this! I'm perfectly capable of doing this myself. You'll see, they'll be together in no time and it will be thanks to me." I didn't wait for them to respond before I stormed out of the Great Hall and went back up to the dormitory and shut myself into my bed to begin planning how to get them together.

I had a quill in my hand, perched above a piece of parchment with the title

'Operation get Evans to love James'

written at the top, unfortunately it had been well over two hours and that was all that was on the parchment, the only idea that I had come up with was too ridiculous to even consider writing down; there was no way that pushing them into a small broom closet and locking the door would ever actually make her fall in love, it would be much more likely to end up with him mumbling something stupid about how pretty she was and her cursing him and breaking the door down.. no that would never work.

A little while later someone knocked on one of my bedposts and I quickly waved my wand over the parchment to hide the contents- if you could call six words contents- and answered the knock. "Err.. come in?" I'd never had someone knock on my bed before so I wasn't really sure what the correct etiquette was for the situation. That seemed to do the trick though and Evans opened one of my curtains, "Oh." well she was the last person I expected to stick their head into my bed.

"Hey Hunt, could I talk to you for a second?" I was too shocked to think of a reasonable way to decline so just nodded my head, "D'you think we could talk somewhere.. that isn't your bed?" red flared on my cheeks and I nodded again,

"Sorry, yeah sure." I really didn't like to be caught off-guard like this, and it was the second time in the last two months that Evans had managed it. I climbed out of my bed and followed her out into the middle of the dorm so that we could talk, without the awkwardness of sitting in my bed.

For the first couple of minutes we sat there, on the floor, in the middle of our dormitory and she just stared at me, while I stared at the floor. I wasn't sure what to say to her and I had been assuming that she had something that she wanted to talk to me about, or to ask me. Which wasn't too much of a leap seeing as she was the one who knocked on my bed, not the other way around. "So.. Err.. Evans.. What did you want to talk to me about exactly?" she looked up at me startled, that confused me, "Didn't you have something you wanted to say? Something that warranted me being disturbed from my scheming ways?"

"Oh, well it was just- I was wondering, its been a while since Potter spoke to me- I guess I was just wondering... if he'd mentioned anything to you about me?" this girl's talent for shocking me was starting to become frustrating, I didn't want someone running around with the ability to make my mouth gape like this with just one simple- albeit drawn out- sentence. She scowled at me, "You don't need to look quite so shocked Hunt." I flushed red again and closed my mouth,

"Sorry about that Evans, but it's pretty shocking for _you_ to ask _me_ whether _James Potter_ had mentioned you. It isn't something I'm accustomed to hearing from you, I'm much more used to things like 'pick up your clothes Hunt' or 'you better be back before curfew this time Hunt' or-"

"Yes, okay I get it Hunt. It isn't normal for me to be asking you for any kind of help, especially concerning James Potter."

"Wait, you're asking me for help? What with? I thought you were just asking me if he's mentioned you." Lily had the decency to look a little embarrassed at that, she'd been working up to the asking for help with the question about James, I hoped that didn't mean that she wasn't actually starting to show an interest in him and she was just using it as a ploy. "Why don't you just tell me what you actually wanted to ask me? I'm no good at guessing these things. My imagination is too active and I come up with all these wild theories that are never even close to the truth.. sometimes I'm actually rather disappointed that they aren't true like the time that-"

"Hunt! Focus!"

"Sorry, I tend to ramble a little... I believe we'd gotten to the point in the conversation where you tell me what you wanted."

"Well its just that Potter has been acting differently this year, he's head boy and he's stopped embarrassing me at every opportunity and he seems to be a lot more mature than he used to be. I guess I was wondering if you knew whether it was all just an act or if he'd really grown up this year?"

"I thought you needed help with something."

"I am, you telling me this will help a lot. So?" she wasn't looking at me, she had now taken to staring at the floor. I didn't say anything straight away, I couldn't make my brain think of how to put what I wanted to say to her.

"Well of course he's grown up he's had a lot to deal with and its been hard for him. I think that's why he stopped making a big show of asking you out, he figured out there are more important things to think about rather than just planning how he would ask you out the next time and why you weren't saying yes and what he could do to make you like him and what exactly it was about himself that you found so repulsive. You see, he spent a lot of his time thinking about you and how to 'get you'. So yes he has really grown up and gotten more mature, but don't think he's doing this for you, he didn't have a choice. He isn't doing this to get your attention or to make you like him, its just kinda happened. Hope that helped."

Evans nodded and quietly thanked me before getting up and leaving the dormitory and me sitting on the floor, I really didn't understand what just happened but it could mean that my plan just got a whole lot easier, although it did occur to me that they might be able to get together without my help now, which could mean that James still wouldn't forgive me. So really, I didn't know how to feel about this new development because on one hand I was so happy for him that she was coming round and that she was starting to think of him as a mature person rather than just an annoyance, but on the other hand it might mean that I have to think of some other way of getting James to talk to me again.

I was still in that same spot on the floor when Gabby and Susie found me, "You need to start spending less time sitting on the floor thinking about him, we keep finding you like this." I smiled up at them,

"Nuh uh, the last few times you've found me I've been crying, and you've never found me sitting in the middle of the dorm looking _confused_." I spat the word like it was something horrific, which when it was relating to me it was, I was rarely confused I prided myself on always knowing what those around me were doing and how they were feeling so the fact that I'd missed this huge change in Evans was highly disconcerting to me. Gabby and Susie seemed surprised by this revelation as well, well Susie was; Gabby found it rather amusing and started teasing me almost instantly,

"What? Riley Hunt confused about? THE Riley Hunt, knower of everything and everyone's business?" I turned to glare at her before getting up and flouncing over to my bed and dropping heavily onto the covers, Susie rolled her eyes at Gabby's teasing and took a more serious approach to things

"What happened? What're you confused about?" I explained to them what had happened and told them my worries about James never speaking to me again because he could probably get Lily on his own now. They assured me that I was being ridiculous and that James would probably manage to stuff it up some how and that he would still need my help.

At dinner that night things got weirder; Evans, Meadows and Yates waved the three of us over to sit with them, I was getting so sick of these girls surprising me and I wanted it to stop. Usually they were easy to figure out, they wouldn't speak to us unless it was to tell us to do something or to start an argument about something, that was just how we worked as dorm-mates it had been that way since third year.

I looked at Gabby and Susie to see what they wanted to do about this new situation, Susie had clearly already made her mind up and was heading to where the other three were sitting so we had little choice but to follow her lead and join the other three girls. After we'd been sitting in an awkward silence for about ten minutes Susie spoke up, "This is nice." I don't think our reactions were quite what she'd been aiming for when she made her observation but it worked none the less, we all burst out laughing at the same time and after that it seemed like we were able to talk freely to each other, as if we'd always been friends and the rift in third year had never happened.

None of the other noticed that the rest of the hall were staring at us in shock, everyone knew about the split in our dorm, it wasn't something that happened often, that a dorm would split and stay that way. Usually if there were fights in the dorms they would be cleared up after a week but our had gone on for three years.

The marauders were the most shocked of all because they knew the extent of the rift and how stubborn each of us girls could be and I had said to James many a time that I didn't think things would ever be better in our dorm. He and Remus were smiling slightly at the development but Sirius looked like he'd had better evenings, I didn't understand that but didn't dwell on it for the moment because suddenly there was a loud bang from the Slytherin side of the room and a select few of them were up dancing on the table.

James, remus and peter looked surprised by that, so I deduced that Sirius had done it to distract the masses from the recent reconciliation of the Gryffindor seventh year girls.

He never did like to be in the background, he couldn't stand for us to have the spotlight for one dinner.. although we didn't really want it either. We were all just glad we could be like normal dorm-mates again, without the constant bitching.


	7. Chapter 7

The next couple of days passed without incident, I'd put my mission out of my head for a while; James had been waiting around for Lily for six years now, a couple more weeks wouldn't be too hard for him now. I was spending my time getting to know my other three dorm-mates again, after all we had all changed since third year. Through a surprising turn of events I found that Lily and I actually had some stuff in common and were spending rather a lot of time together.

It took me six years but I was finally seeing the side to Lily Evans that James fell in love with all those years ago, but it didn't have quite the same effect on me, I wasn't that way inclined . When she wasn't glaring at you from across the room, or yelling at you for slacking off, or giving you detention for being out after curfew she was actually quite hilarious and really entertaining to be around. If I had known all of this I would have helped James to get her long ago, rather than letting my own feelings for him develop into the love I felt.

The only problem in our dorm was that Susie was still dating Frank, even though now we did all know about Alice's crush on him,

"But Riley, Alice likes him too.. it isn't fair for me to keep dating him when she likes him as well." I rolled my eyes, that girl is far too nice sometimes,

"You and Frank are perfect together, you can't break up with him just because some other girl fancies him. It just doesn't work that way."

"Yeah but she isn't just some other girl is she? She's one of our dorm-mates, I have to share a room with her for the rest of the year, and we've all just started to become friends again. I don't want to ruin that because of Frank." I shook my head,

"I'm not going to let you break up with him because of this, it's a ridiculous idea and you'd be miserable, and Frank would be miserable and it wouldn't help anything, and even if you did break up with him there's no telling that he would even look at her so all three of you would be all miserable and depressed and you'd start to resent her and not want to be her friend anyway. Or what if she and Frank did get together, you'd be REALLY miserable and hate them both and not want to be her friend anyway." Susie actually laughed at that,

"I don't think I've heard so many scenarios ending in me being miserable in one rant before, but when you put it like that I really don't want to break up with him." I smiled a smug little smile and crossed my arms happily across my chest, I kept the position until she rolled her eyes and threw her pillow at me. I just grinned and tossed it back to her.

"I have quidditch practise, you coming out to watch? I think Gabby is planning on spending some time with Remus in the stands", she started to turn me down, "And Lily, Alice and Dorcas will no doubt be down there.. so really you'll be the only one staying up here instead of being down there.. and I'd hate for you to miss out on something..." Susie rolled her eyes, knowing that I just didn't want to walk down to the pitch on my own,

"Miss out on James refusing to talk to you, getting a numb arse, and being freezing cold? Not to mention missing Gabby and Remus flirting, while Dorcas tries to interrupt them, and Lily sits pretending to read so she can watch James without people noticing? You're right, how could I even think about missing all that?" I grinned,

"Exactly, and anyway are you or are you not a witch? Heating charm, cushioning charm, and I dunno, a good book?" Susie laughed again and grabbed the novel she'd been reading, along with her wand and followed me out of the dorm and down to the quidditch pitch.

We were almost at the pitch when I noticed that there were people in the air, "Suze, what time is it?" Susie frowned at me,

"Ten to seven, why?" I narrowed my eyes and responded in an angrier tone than she deserved,

"Because James started practise without me again." this was the second time that week that James had done that, the last time he said that the Ravenclaw team had booked the pitch for eight o'clock so he changed the time and must have forgotten to mention it to me. I could only imagine what his excuse would be this time.

I got onto the pitch, kicked off into the air and flew straight over to James, "What the hell James?" he glared at me, something I still wasn't used to from him,

"Where have you been Hunt?"

"Up in the common room, it isn't even seven yet so I know I'm not late. Why did you start without me again?" James shrugged, he didn't even have the decency to come up with an excuse this time. I wasn't intending on saying anything to him, my plan was just to carry on with practise and be down at the pitch earlier next time so he wouldn't be able to start without me.

"Seriously James?" I saw Black open his mouth out of the corner of my eye, I turned my most intense glare on him, not in the mood for the 'Serious/ Sirius' joke that he so obviously wanted to tell, he snapped his mouth shut and turned just in time to smack the bludger back to his partner, "You can't just leave me out of practise because we had a stupid fight. You put me on this team, and even though I am a rather gifted chaser I still need to practise with you and Lesley if you want us to win on Saturday." he didn't respond to me, just shouted instructions to the rest of the team to fly laps and try and beat their records.

I turned to join them and fly my laps with the rest of the team but James cut me off, "Not you. You've been late for every practise since Halloween, it isn't acceptable. You're off the team." my mouth dropped open in shock, the first game of the season was in two days and he was kicking me off the team. None of the rest of the team were flying their laps anymore, they'd all frozen when they heard James. At least they understood what he had just done; taken away their chance of winning. "What're you still doing here Hunt? You heard me, you're off my team. Get off the pitch."

I turned my broom around and started towards the castle, I found the window I was looking for, the fifth floor Transfiguration corridor. I knocked on Joe's office window and waited until he came to the window. He was surprised to see me, obviously expecting it to be an owl, seeing as people generally used the door to visit him, "Uh Riley, why-" he didn't manage to finish his question because I flung myself into his arms and buried my face in his shoulder.

He rubbed circles on my back until I calmed down enough for him to detach me from his waist, "What's up Lee?" I smiled softly at the nickname he used for me whenever I was upset when we were kids.

"James kicked me off the team." I felt like I was tattling on him; technically I was telling a teacher but at this moment, I was just telling my big brother because I was upset, and he would know how to make me feel better. Or he would tell me what to do to James to make me feel better.. either way I would feel better once I'd spoken to Joe.

Lucky for me Joe was in the mood to be helpful older brother at the moment, if he'd been in teacher mode he would have marched out onto the quidditch pitch and demand that James put me back on the team. Joe had finished his teacher training in my fifth year, last year he'd been working at a school in Bulgaria. Dumbledore asked him to come back for the year because McGonagall's daughter had given birth but something had gone wrong and she was now really sick, so Joe was standing in as Transfiguration professor and head of Gryffindor.

"What d'you mean he kicked you off the team? Why? You're a brilliant chaser!" I smiled lamely,

"I know that, everyone knows that but me and James had a huge fight right after Halloween and he hasn't spoken to me since, for the last couple of trainings he's been making excuses to start without me or changing the time and not telling me so that I don't go. He said that its been too many times now and that it isn't acceptable.. then he said I was off the team." Joe angrily shoved himself up from his chair, wincing at the pain in his back from the fast movement,

"He can't do that! He's been changing things so that you don't make it, that isn't a justified reason to kick you off! I'm going to go and give that boy a piece of my mind, and maybe a few detentions, and maybe I'll revoke his captaincy." I rolled my eyes at how over-dramatic he was being,

"Joey, don't bother. When they lose again to _Hufflepuff_ he'll realise that they need me and he'll put me back on the team. There's no way he'll be able to find a chaser as good as me before the match so don't even worry about it. I have faith that it'll all work out. But for now d'you have anything I can do? Everyone's out at the pitch and I've already done all my homework." He didn't look happy about it but nodded anyway and passed me some first year papers to mark. His students liked when I marked their papers because I was generally a little more lenient with the grades than he was, and I gave them more helpful tips than he did.

"You can grade these for me. But stop giving them all top marks, it takes away from those who actually deserve them." I grinned and stuck my tongue out at him, after twenty minutes he looked over at what I was doing, "Stop writing the corrections for them, they're meant to research it better and hand it in next lesson but you make that a pointless exercise with your 'tips'." I just grinned again and carried on with what I was doing, when he realised that he was having no effect on my marking he left me to it and went back to his sixth year stuff.

I stayed with Joe until dinner time, we didn't notice the time until both of our stomachs were rumbling loudly, after a glance at the clock I sprung out of my chair and almost ran to the door, only stopping because my brother was chuckling at my antics and eagerness to get to the food. He stood at a much slower pace, wincing again at the pain in his back "You know you could always go to the hospital wing to get a pain potion for that." he shook his head and I rolled my eyes, he'd always been stubborn about that sort of thing. "Hide it better then. Or I'll tell mum you're still in pain." I took notice of his glare and grinned in what I knew was a slightly evil way, and despite what my sister will tell you I did not spend a month practising that in the mirror one summer, before turning and running down the corridor with a slightly manic laugh, also not practised..

When I got down to dinner the girls were there waiting for me to fill them in on where I'd gone, what I'd been doing all afternoon and how I was going to get back onto the team, "To see Joey, marking first year papers, and I'm going to let Gryffindor lose." Lily, Gabby and Susie's mouths dropped open either not believing what I was going to do or just not wanting to.

"But that only gives them four days to get used to working with another Chaser, you can't do that. The whole of Gryffindor will hate you if we lose because you didn't play!" I shook my head at Lily,

"It isn't my fault, James kicked me off the team and there were about twenty other people down at the pitch who heard and saw that, and that isn't including the team. So if they want to blame anyone then they can blame him." the marauders chose that point to sit down opposite us; even though James now hated me the rest of them were still friends, except him and Lily which meant that I still had someone to talk to.

Once the rest of them were involved in a conversation Lily leaned closer to me so we could continue out conversation, "I'm sure if you just apologised for whatever it is you did he would let you back on the team in a heartbeat." I shook my head sadly,

"I tried that straight away, this isn't going to go away so easily. I really don't know what to do to make him forgive me," of course I already had a plan, but Lily couldn't know that, "Anyway, if he doesn't want to talk to me then that's fine. If they lost to Hufflepuff that's down to him." after that last statement I pushed my still full plate away and left the hall.

In the dormitory that night our conversation continued again, "What if you didn't apologise but got Professor Hunt to speak to him? I'm sure he could get you back on the team, James is head boy so he wouldn't be able to go against a professor without the worry of that being revoked. And he wouldn't want that because he wouldn't have an excuse to spend time with Lily." I chuckled at that comment, for one because I still found it bizarre that everyone referred to my big brother as 'Professor Hunt' and secondly because Gabby thought that James still needed an excuse to talk to Lily, she didn't realise that Lily wouldn't have a problem with spending time with James outside of their head duties.

"Joey did already suggest- well more like threaten- to speak to James but there's no point really. They'll lose an then James will come begging me to come back to the team! So just leave it alone guys, it'll be fine." I knew none of them were happy about the arrangement but I hadn't given them much choice in the matter; nothing was going to be done about it and they knew that if they did anything there would be some sort of embarrassing consequence.

Saturday came around quickly and for the first time I walked down to the pitch on match-day with butterflies in my stomach. I had never felt nervous before a match because I always knew that I had some sort of control over the result but this time I would be sitting in the stands and wouldn't be able to do anything. It had occurred to me the day before that Gryffindor might actually win, then I would never get back on the team.. that really wasn't something I had considered before.

During the game I constantly found myself having to stop myself from cheering when Hufflepuff scored, my friends would understand but the rest of the house really wouldn't, they would consider me more of a traitor than they already did for not playing.

I felt horrible at the end of the match, I was relieved that we had lost but because of the relief I felt while everyone around me was so disappointed I felt like the most awful person in the house. I went back up to the common room with the girls, it was only the third time I could remember Gryffindor not celebrating after a quidditch match.

We found a table to sit at so we could do some of our homework so we could have the Sunday off. That didn't go exactly as planned. Almost as soon as we sat down the marauders arrived in the common room, I could hear them as soon as they came into the room. I sighed into my work and Susie gave me a funny look, "I'm going to kill her, its all her fault that we lost!"

"Sirius, please. Leave her alone, it isn't just her fault."

"And what exactly is that supposed to mean Moony?" That made me feel even worse, I was worth them fighting about, Remus should have just let them yell at me or do whatever it was they wanted to.

"Nothing James, don't even worry about it. I just don't think you should be so hard on her about this. She hasn't exactly had an easy couple of weeks." that made me frown, what was Remus talking about? I hadn't exactly had a difficult couple of weeks.

"Riley, what's wrong?" the girls were all looking at me weirdly now, then I realised that they couldn't hear the conversation going on across the other side of the room, I just shook my head and went back to the marauder's conversation.

"Stop defending her Moony! She didn't play and we lost. That makes this her fault. Who else's could it be?" Sirius didn't even give Remus time to respond, "And don't bother suggesting that Hufflepuff suddenly got good, they haven't beaten us since second year!" that was the last of that conversation before Sirius and James came storming across the common room with Peter right behind them and Remus trailing behind sending apologetic looks in my direction.

"I hope you're happy now Hunt, you could have just lost us the cup!" I rolled my eyes at the over dramatic boy in front of me,

"It was the first match of the season, and they didn't even win by much so the cup could still be ours. We just need to win all the other matches." James narrowed his eyes at me and took his turn to speak,

We found a table to sit at so we could do some of our homework so we could have the Sunday off. That didn't go exactly as planned. Almost as soon as we sat down the marauders arrived in the common room, I could hear them as soon as they came into the room. I sighed into my work and Susie gave me a funny look, "I'm going to kill her, its all her fault that we lost!"

"Sirius, please. Leave her alone, it isn't just her fault."

"And what exactly is that supposed to mean Moony?" That made me feel even worse, I was worth them fighting about, Remus should have just let them yell at me or do whatever it was they wanted to.

"Nothing James, don't even worry about it. I just don't think you should be so hard on her about this. She hasn't exactly had an easy couple of weeks." that made me frown, what was Remus talking about? I hadn't exactly had a difficult couple of weeks.

"Riley, what's wrong?" the girls were all looking at me weirdly now, then I realised that they couldn't hear the conversation going on across the other side of the room, I just shook my head and went back to the marauder's conversation.

"Stop defending her Moony! She didn't play and we lost. That makes this her fault. Who else's could it be?" Sirius didn't even give Remus time to respond, "And don't bother suggesting that Hufflepuff suddenly got good, they haven't beaten us since second year!" that was the last of that conversation before Sirius and James came storming across the common room with Peter right behind them and Remus trailing behind sending apologetic looks in my direction.

"I hope you're happy now Hunt, you could have just lost us the cup!" I rolled my eyes at the over dramatic boy in front of me,

"It was the first match of the season, and they didn't even win by much so the cup could still be ours. We just need to win all the other matches." James narrowed his eyes at me and took his turn to speak,

"What d'you mean 'we'? Surely you don't think I'm going to put you back on the team after this? I saw you in the stands having to actually stop yourself from cheering whenever Hufflepuff scored against us!" I opened and closed my mouth a couple of times, making James smirk and me look a fool.

"No, that's not what I meant. I'm part of the house too, and the cup isn't just awarded to the quidditch team it's for the whole house." James just stood and smirked some more but Sirius actually let out a bark of laughter,

"You did, you actually thought that if we lost everything would be forgiven and you would be back on the team and Prongs would forgive you for everything you did. Well news flash _sweetheart_ it ain't that easy. You won't be playing for Gryffindor ever again so get used to it."

"I didn't want the team to lose and I wasn't expecting to be put back on the team just like that. I had hoped that you would reconsider but I can see that isn't going to happen to whatever. Just make sure you train your new chaser better, we don't need to lose another game because of you Potter." James narrowed his eyes again and smirk fell off his face, he started to respond with Sirius beat him to it,

"Our new chaser is going to be ten times the chaser you ever were. Prongs only suggested that you join the team in second year because you didn't have anyone else and he felt sorry for you. You think too highly of yourself if you think that you're irreplaceable. _We_ are going to win the quidditch cup and you aren't going to be helping."

I turned back to my table of friends and grabbed my wand, "I'm going to go for a walk.. see you guys later." I turned back to leave and saw Sirius smirking at me, clearly thinking he'd won, it was something I sorely wished to wipe off his face, but I just didn't have the energy to stand and continue to fight with him.

As I was leaving through the portrait hole I realised that I had gone wandering off alone almost every day of the year so far, that probably wasn't a good thing. I decided not to go outside this time, instead I wandered to the astronomy tower, so that I could see the grounds but still be inside and warm.

It turned out that my friends were getting better at finding me because I was sitting there for less than an hour before someone came to find me. I was surprised to find it was Remus this time, I had been expecting Susie, Gabby, or Lily it hadn't occurred to me that Remus would leave his friends to find me. "Are you okay Riley?" I shook my head,

"I just don't understand why Black hates me so much, I've never done anything to him.. nothing that would make him hate me this much anyway." Remus looked at me with a sad look on his face and started to explain it to me.

**(AN: sorry about the wait.. had slight writers block and I really had no idea where I was going with this chapter. But hopefully the slightly longer length makes up for the wait a little bit? You were so close to finding out why Sirius hates her.. but noo :( you have to have some sort of incentive to come back again :) **

**Hopefully it won't be too long before the next update.. **

**Hollie :D )**


	8. Chapter 8

"Can you really not think of any reason that you might not be Sirius' favourite person?" I frowned trying to remember if I had ever done anything, I'd known him before Hogwarts but we'd been friends then. There really wasn't anything that I could think of that would justify why he was treating me the way he did.

"He just suddenly turned on me when we started Hogwarts, we'd always been friends before that. Neither of us bought into the 'purebloods rule' stuff that our parents were teaching us so we kind of just fell together. But honestly Remus, if I could think of something I would tell you. There's no reason for me to keep anything to myself, not about this." Remus nodded, showing that he understood and believed that I hadn't done anything to Sirius, or maybe he was agreeing because he knew what the real reason was.

"He told me why he doesn't like you. One night in second year, just after me and you started talking properly, I was curious about his feelings towards you; obviously you'd told me that you guys kind of grew up together but as far as I could tell there wasn't any reason to dislike you. When I first asked him he didn't want to tell me, I think he was embarrassed about it, but I finally got it out of him after promising him I would never tell anyone-" I interrupted him there,

"Remus, if you promised not to tell anyone- and I'm assuming that included me- maybe you shouldn't. I don't want you two to fall out over something like this, it isn't worth it."

"Would it make you feel better if you knew why he was acting this way?" I nodded and started to protest again, because I didn't think that just making me feel a little bit better was a good enough reason to cause problems between friends like Remus and Sirius, but he didn't let me get a word out, "If it'll make you feel better and you promise not to say anything to him or act any differently around him then I don't see why I can't clue you in to the mysterious mind of Sirius Black." I chuckled at that,

"Mysterious is not the word I would use to describe Sirius Black's mind, I'm pretty sure most people could guess what he's thinking about at any time of day." Remus burst into laughter and I grinned at him, not expecting quite such a reaction from him; I was expecting a slight chuckle at most.

"you're probably right but I'm not so sure this is as obvious as most of his thoughts. He told me that the reason he doesn't like you is because even though you were brought up with the same people and with the same ideals when you were sorted into Gryffindor your parents accepted it and pulled back from the Voldemort stuff, but his beat him and called him a traitor when he went home for Christmas." I nodded, understanding that that would be difficult for him, seeing someone who he was brought up with being treated so differently form him when we did the same thing.

"But our families are completely different, mine were never as into it as his are. His family have been supporters of the dark arts since Grindelwald, and even before then. Mine were brought into it because they were in Slytherin and all their friends were involved with it. But they got out before it was too late to turn back, before all the activity started. It was just a coincidence that it happened around the time I was sorted; they'd been talking about leaving for months and were planning on leaving it until me and Chloe were safely away at school, just in case."

"I know that, and I think Sirius knows that but it's still hard for him to see you with such a loving family when that's all he's ever wanted. He said that when you were both sorted into Gryffindor it would be good to have an ally who would know what he was going through without him having to explain, but it didn't work out like that." I could completely understand how he felt and I did feel better now that I knew what was going through his head when he turned on me.

"I get all that, but he has the Potters now; they treat him like a second son, so why is he still acting like that?" Remus winced; like there was more to it but he didn't want to tell me and he'd been hoping that I would just accept that and we could all move on and pretend like I didn't know anything. "There's more isn't there? There's some other reason that he hates me. Please Remus? I need to know the whole story." Remus looked slightly affronted,

"You said I didn't have to tell you a minute ago!"

"But then you started to tell me and you know me, I have to know the whole story." Remus smiled a little and nodded,

"That's true enough. You mentioned that he has the Potters now, but he said that sometimes he doesn't feel like he does. You see after he was sorted no one really wanted to know him; the Slytherins called him a traitor, the Gryffindors were wary of him because of his family, and well you know his family. The only person who didn't care about his house or his past was James, but then you impressed him on the train and were sorted into the same house and James wanted to be your friend too."

"Surely he didn't expect someone like James to only have one friend! That's just ridiculous." Remus nodded again,

"Of course he knew that James would have other friends but he wanted to be James' best friend, but there were times- that even me and Peter noticed- that you knew what James needed more than Sirius did, you always knew what he was thinking and feeling, and you could always make him feel better with a look and a few words, but Sirius felt like he often made things worse because he would make a joke or just say the wrong thing." I shook my head, for the first time in this conversation Remus had said something that didn't make any sense to me,

"James doesn't feel like that though, I mean yeah sometimes he would come to me instead when he didn't feel like telling you all what was wrong, or if it was something that he though Sirius would make fun of him for. And as for Sirius making jokes and saying the wrong thing; he's never had to deal with emotions before, in his family emotions are seen as weakness so he never really encountered someone showing them until Hogwarts so it would have taken a little bit of getting used to." I couldn't tell Remus that the reason I always seemed to know what James was thinking was because I spent a hell of a lot of time watching him and his reactions to things.

"We all know that and we understand all that but that's just how Sirius feels sometimes, especially in first year because he didn't have anyone else for a while. Now though he doesn't feel that way so much-"

"Because James hates me too?" Remus frowned at me and continued,

"No, because he's getting better at emotions and dealing with other people's so when one of us is upset or pissed off about something he doesn't just stand around and make jokes like he used to." I raised an eyebrow at him and sighed when he raised one right back at me.

"I guess that makes sense, he has had seven years to get used to dealing with people after all." Remus laughed again and shoved me playfully, I grinned at him and gave him a squeeze,

"Thanks for telling me all that Remus, I promise I'll be completely normal with him and not go back to the common room throw my arms around him and tell him I forgive him for his years of hating me with no decent explanation and that it all makes sense now that you've explained it all to me." I grinned and stood up to run before Remus could get me to retaliate to my teasing,

"You know that I'm faster than you right Hunt?" I let out that manic laugh I told you about earlier and kicked the speed up a notch,

"You'll never catch me Lupin! I have super speed!" and to prove to him that my words were true I left him trailing five minutes behind me. By the time he arrived back at the common room I was back with my friends, breathing normally, reading the book I abandoned when I left earlier. When I heard him come through the portrait hole, easily distinguished by his heavy breathing, I looked up with a grin and winked at him as if to make my point clearer to him.

Unfortunately that wink didn't go unnoticed by Gabby, neither did the fact that we came back within five minutes of each other and we were both in much better moods that when we left. To say the least it did not look good from where she was sitting. But being the teenage girls that we were she didn't quietly take me to the side and ask me what was going on, no she angrily shoved all her things back into her bag, forgetting to shut her ink properly and probably ruining the essay she'd been working on, and stormed over to the portrait hole and out into the corridor beyond it.

My mouth fell open, "What just happened?" I wasn't used to someone else storming off in a mood, I'd been under the impression that was my thing. The other girls looked just as perplexed as I felt, Gabby just wasn't the sort to storm off like that, she was always the most calm, happiest one in our group. "Should we go after her?" Susie shook her head,

"I think we should give her some time to cool off; she never gets like that so I don't think it would be wise for any of us to be near her right now." I nodded in agreement but I wasn't happy about it, she and Susie always went looking for me when I was like that.. but it would take me an age to find her on my own and it didn't look like anyone else was wanting to look for her.

Gabby still hadn't turned up two hours later and I was worrying, I could concentrate on my homework so I decided that I was going to go and look for her. Not caring that I probably wouldn't find her or that if I did she would probably kill me or something or at least attempt to.

I wandered around for an hour before giving it up and heading back to the common room, hoping that she had turned up while I was out looking for her so we could all go to dinner together. When I got back to the common room Lily gestured towards the staircase, indicating that Susie and Gabby were up there, I nodded in thanks and made my way up the stairs.

As soon as I opened the door Gabby started shouting at me, "How could you do that? Just because you can't have James it doesn't mean you can go after boys other people have feelings for!" I stopped in my tracks,

"Sorry?" I was so shocked I couldn't even think what she could possibly be talking about, I hadn't been going after anyone.

"Remus, I saw you wink at him when you got back, and you were both so much happier than when you left. He left the common room just after you did earlier, and you were both gone for ages. Then you come back all happy and smiling and winking at him? It doesn't take a genius to work out what you were doing together! Where were you anyway?" I would have laughed at her assumption if she hadn't been so upset about it,

"We were at the top of the astronomy tower-"

"Oh! That's disgusting! That's where Black takes his conquests! You're just like the rest of them, throwing yourself at whatever marauder comes your way!" I frantically shook my head, trying to get the words out to explain myself.

"It wasn't like that Gabby. I promise you we were just talking. He knew I was upset and he wanted to tell me something that he thought might help a little." Gabby scoffed, clearly not believing me,

"What did he tell you then?" I looked at the floor, which in retrospect, probably made things look worse,

"I can't tell you, he made me promise not to."

"Oh I'm sure he did, that's nice and convenient for you isn't it? Of course he would tell you not to tell anyone, means you don't have to make something up doesn't it! Come on Susie, lets go get some dinner."

"Sure, you coming Riley?" I nodded and made to follow them,

"Don't even think about sitting with us tonight. You can sit with your darling Remus and he can tell you more secrets and forbid you from telling anyone!"

"Gabby, don't you think this is a bit much? I doubt Riley would lie to you about something like this."

"No I don't think its a bit much. She can sit with us when she decides to either tell me the truth or tell me what she and Remus could possibly have been talking about that no one else is allowed to know." and with one last glare from Gabby and an apologetic look from Susie they left for dinner. I decided not to bother with dinner, I wouldn't have anyone to sit with anyway and I hated to sit alone in the Great Hall.

**(AN: I've decided to give you this relatively early because I'm weird and I can't start a new chapter until this one is up :P **

**Semi happy with this chapter, it could probably be better. But you finally know why Sirius hates her, even if it was a little bit predictable. I think in the next chapter I might have something happier happen for Riley, she seems to be having a bit of a rough time of things.. and things generally aren't getting better for her in my plan of big events :P **

**Thanks for reading, and PLEASE leave a review.. they make me unbelievably happy and I'd like to know what you're thinking about the story and how it can be improved- because I know there are probably a lot of things that could be better.. maybe you could even leave some ideas of what you'd like to see in future chapters :) **

**Hollie :D )**


	9. Chapter 9

Gabby still hadn't spoken to me almost three weeks later, "Just give her some more time! She'll come around but she needs time to get over it. She thinks you've been sneaking around with Remus and we all know she's been practically in love with him since first year!" Susie kept trying to tell me that it would all be okay and we would be back to normal again in no time at all, that I just had to be patient with Gabby. But she started saying that to me after a day of Gabby's silence and by the time we got to almost three weeks it was starting to get a little old.

Things seemed to be getting worse with James as well, although he still had yet to speak to me since the night of the Hufflepuff match he was sending a much higher number of glares and dirty looks my way. When I mentioned that to Susie she laughed and told me I was just being paranoid and that James was just glaring at me his usual amount.

Dorcas had been listening in to our conversation and when Susie went to get something from the dorm she scooted into the now empty seat next to mine, "You're right about James you know, I don't know what happened between the two of you but it seems like it's gotten worse." our talk of James had drawn Lily into the conversation as well, it seemed that she had also noticed this change and wanted to know the reason behind it almost as much as I did and we weren't disappointed, "Well I overheard Pettigrew and Sirius talking about it and Sirius told Pettigrew that James had told him the reason in confidence and peter couldn't repeat it to anyone, obviously they didn't notice me." Lily rolled her eyes, not only at the fact that Black would openly discuss James' secrets in the common room, but at Dorcas' shameless show-boating.

"Get on with it Dorcas. Just tell us what's going on with him and why he's suddenly glaring at her more than he was before."

"Well it's really quite obvious when you think about it." It was my turn to roll my eyes at that,

"Thing generally are rather clear in hindsight, once it's already been spelt out to you." Dorcas glared at me for the interruption, and for the snarky comment, but it didn't deter her from telling her story. She did love being the one with all the answers and she wasn't about to lose the opportunity to tell a story.. Or share a piece of gossip.

"Anyway. Sirius said that James is mad because he feels like you're trying to take all his friends away from him." My mouth dropped open, as if I didn't have any control over it,

"And what about that is obvious?"

"Well first you're suddenly friends with Lily and he thinks that because you two fell out that you're poisoning her against him; makes sense that he would think that. And now you're sneaking around with Remus and he thinks that you're probably telling Remus things about him to turn Remus against him and make Remus like you more, which, again makes sense because since you two came in that one time Remus has been more distant with the boys and he's spending more time away from them.. Presumably with you since everyone's noticed that you two are away from your friends at similar times." I couldn't believe all of this, James knew me, how could he think that I would even consider trying to turn his friends against him? Just because we had a fight doesn't mean I suddenly want him to be alone and friendless, in fact I wanted the opposite of that, especially where Lily was concerned.

"That's completely ridiculous! Does he really think that his friends are so disloyal that they would abandon him because Riley said some stuff? I cannot believe him!" I was grateful and slightly surprised that Lily would defend me like that but I did wish that she could have used different wording because to Peter, who walked past just as she said that, it would have sounded like I had said things to her and Remus and there was no doubt in my mind that he would go and report back to Black, who would then tell James that his suspicions about me were true.

I didn't bother to go and explain to Peter, it wouldn't make a difference to what would be reported back. The bigger problem I was facing at that moment was that Lily had reverted back to hating James rather than giving him a chance like she had been for the last few weeks. They were actually starting to become friends, I hadn't really had to do much, just leave her alone when the only other person around was James but other than that they had pretty much done it all themselves.

It made me strangely proud of James, that he was being himself enough for her to see how amazing he was, rather than what a prat he could be when he was trying to impress her. But now because of this revelation all that progress he'd made had been lost.

I noticed James coming across the common room towards us, glaring at me again, so I made my excuses to lily and went to sit by the window at the other side of the common room. "Hey Lily." James took my seat next to Lily but the girl turned to him with a scowl fixed on her face,

"Get lost Potter." James' face fell; I couldn't bear it, why did Dorcas have to start that conversation with me when Lily was in earshot? If she hadn't been Lily would be blissfully unaware of what James thought of me and it all would have been fine, they would be happily chatting away right now. Instead of that James was looking hurt and confused and Lily was starting to shout at him. "How can you think that about Riley? What has she ever done to you? She's only ever been your friend and now you think she's turning everyone against you? Well I can tell you one thing, she didn't even need to turn me against you, you've bloody well done that yourself you arrogant prat!"

"But Lil-"

"No Potter, I'm not going to sit here and listen to your excuses. She was one of your best friends. Grow up and forgive her already! I don't care what she did to you; it wouldn't have been on purpose! As far as I'm concerned it was probably your fault anyway." James' eyes snapped up to where I was sitting and I wasn't quick enough to look away, yeah that definitely didn't look good, he must have thought I was watching to see how well my plan was working.. If only he knew what my plan was he would see that it wasn't working at all!

Lily stood from the table, leaving James sitting there still staring at me with narrowed eyes, now convinced beyond all doubt that I was to blame for Lily's sudden change of heart and for Remus' absence from their group meetings to discuss pranks, girls, and plans to get girls.

I decided not to wait around after that and followed Lily up the stairs to the dorm, Gabby and Susie were sitting on Gabby's bed talking but as soon as we came in they stopped. This had been happening a lot over the past week, I wasn't sure if it was because Susie was inclined to believe Gabby over me or if it was just because they were genuinely discussing something they didn't want anyone to know about.

I didn't hang around in there either, tears started to gather in my eyes again so I moved over to the bathroom so that they wouldn't see them. I had decided to make an effort to control my emotions a bit better but it was hard, I felt unwanted wherever I was; in the common room, in the dorm, on the quidditch pitch. I also felt like the only friend I had these days was Lily; a surprising turn of events when I thought back to the beginning of the year.

I opened the window to let the cool air into the room and turned on the shower, I couldn't stand it when the bathroom got all steamed up from the shower. After I'd given it enough time to warm up I stepped into the shower and let my tears start to fall, I was getting so sick of the amount of crying I'd done already that year and it wasn't even Christmas yet. It was starting to look like it was going to be a long year. When I was done in the shower I went back into the dorm, I'd been in the bathroom for a while, just wasting time until I thought the other girls would be in bed.

The next morning the dormitory was empty by the time I woke up, I'd laid awake for hours the night before, going over different ideas about how to get Lily to fall for James again, and how to make Gabby forgive me without telling her what Remus told me, I didn't really get anywhere though and eventually fell into a light sleep.

I was surprised to find the common room brimming with people; it looked like the whole house was in there, it was a Hogsmeade weekend and well after the time we were allowed to leave the grounds. When I came down the stairs Susie practically ran over to greet me, she had the biggest smile on her face.. it was actually slightly unnerving to see her that happy to see me; even though there hadn't really been a problem between the two of us. "Come see what Gabby did!" she started dragging me over to the notice board where there was a sheet of parchment I hadn't noticed before stuck to it with a list of names on it,

"What am I looking at Suze? You're gonna need to help me out a bit here." Susie just grinned some more and beckoned Gabby over to us, she gave me a small, shy smile and turned to the rest of the house, who were all starting to look like they wanted her to get on with whatever she was doing,

"We all know that Riley was unceremoniously kicked off the Quidditch team for absolutely no reason apart from out captain being a complete arse.. You have also all heard that I started a petition to get her back onto the team, something that used to happen in the old days; I read about it in the library, it's a legitimate practice and is binding. I went to professor Dumbledore about it and he told me that if I could get 150 signatures Riley would be put back on the team in her old spot. Well almost the whole house signed my petition so Riley Hunt, you are officially back on the team in your old chaser spot!" my jaw literally dropped to the floor, I couldn't believe that she'd done this for me, she wasn't speaking to me! The rest of the house started cheering, apparently happy that I was back on the team and clearly thinking along the same lines as Gabby; with me back we might actually win against Ravenclaw in the New Year.

I made a strange noise between a squeak and a scream and ran at her, engulfing her in a hug. "I'm really sorry Riley, I should have believed you when you said that you were just talking, I know you would never do something like that to anyone, let alone one of your best friends, and I'm sorry that it took me so long to realise it."

"That's fine! I'm sorry I couldn't tell you what he told me, but he made me promise and it would ruin one of his friendships if I told you and I couldn't do that to him." Gabby nodded like she completely understood what I was saying,

"I would have started talking to you again so much sooner but I was trying to get people to sign this thing and it was taking longer than I expected and I was so excited about getting you back on the team I was sure I would tell you if I spoke to you and I wanted it to be a surprise one Dumbledore had allowed it."

"Gabby, breathe. I love that you did this for me; it completely makes up for you not speaking to me! I can't believe you did this! You actually willingly spent time in the library for me!"

"I know and you-" whatever she was going to say was interrupted by the arrival of James and Sirius,

"Oi Hunt, I just had a very interesting meeting with Professor Dumbledore.. Seems you're back on the team." I nodded with my eyes narrowed; this wasn't the reaction I was expecting from him, Sirius pitched in with his thoughts,

"You'd better be careful out there Hunt, don't want to get hit by any badly hit bludgers.. I'm just saying, it happens."

"I'm assuming that since you've gone to all this effort to get around my decision as captain that you're actually going to turn up for practise on time from now on, and not turn up halfway through with crap excuses about why you're late. I expect you to be playing at 110%, a hell of a lot better than you were before your break from the game. Oh and you'll need to catch up on all the new plays, we've been doing strategy work in your absence and you need to be up to scratch if you're going to take over as chaser." I nodded,

"Don't worry James; I'll be there on time and better than ever. You know, I think this break from Quidditch was just what I needed to get me back to my best." James glared at me and I suddenly wasn't too sure why I said that, saying things like that wasn't going to help get him to forgive me, if anything it would make him more angry at me. But now wasn't the time to be thinking about that; I had my two best friends back and I was on the quidditch team again! This was going to be a better day and I was going to try my hardest not to think about James and just enjoy the day instead.

"So can we go now? You've made your announcement, we cheered, and everyone's thrilled to have Hunt back on the team. But it is a Hogsmeade weekend and we're missing it." Gabby turned to the boy and looked surprised to see the rest of the house still standing waiting to be allowed to leave,

"What did she do to them to make them stay? They clearly don't want to be here..." Susie just shook her head,

"I asked her that before you came down but she just told me that I didn't want to know, and we have both learnt that when she says that it's generally true." I shuddered at the memory and nodded my agreement while Gabby dismissed the Gryffindors.

We followed the rest of the house down to the gates and past Filch to be signed out of the castle for the day, "Bleedin' kids, makin' me wait around for 'em to get outta bed. Standin' in the cold all mornin' if they 'ad their way." Gabby grinned as we heard Filch's grumbling,

"Added bonus of getting you back on the team; pissing Filch off!"

After that we had an amazing time in Hogsmeade, it'd been a while since I'd been; I missed the last visit because I didn't have anyone to go with when Gabby wasn't speaking to me and was hogging Susie. But this time was different, we went to Honeydukes and stocked up for the next few weeks, then to various other little shops and finally to the Three Broomsticks for warm butterbeer; Filch had been right.. it was a chilly day.

As we climbed in through the portrait hole Remus was just waiting to come out, "Oh Riley, I was just about to come looking for you, I found a book in Hogsmeade and wanted to ask you about a couple things." I looked at my friends and turned back to Remus,

"We were thinking of having a girly night in the dorm, but tomorrow?" Remus smiled and nodded,

"That's fine, it isn't anything important, I was just curious about a couple things.. I'll see you girls tomorrow. Have a nice night." I grinned at him and ran up the stairs to the dorm with the girls, we'd stocked up on enough sweets and enough gossip had built in the weeks we hadn't been speaking to last us through the night, and probably longer.

**(AN: Hey guys, I'm SO sorry for the delay with this update. I knew what I wanted to happen and what I needed to set up for the next chapter but it was difficult to actually write something I was happy with.. This isn't the best thing I've ever written but it'll have to do because I'm sick of not uploading it. So to any of you who have actually stuck with it and are still reading I thank you and hope you enjoy this chapter.. Hopefully it won't be such a long wait for the next one *fingers and toes crossed* **

**Hollie x )**


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

That night was one of too many sweets and catching up on everything we'd missed, for example, I learned that Alice had spoken to Susie about the Frank situation and they now weren't on speaking terms at all because Alice had expected Susie to give in and break up with him so that Alice could have him, me and Gabby aren't speaking to her either. But to Alice's delight the letter she wrote to Frank telling him that we're all ignoring her because of him worked and he wrote to Susie to tell her to grow up. We aren't speaking to him either.

I also found out from Gabby that Dorcas was upset because she found out that Sirius was only 'dating' her to make someone else jealous, though that isn't anything new and we all know who he's trying to make jealous... Even if he denies liking Gabby it's rather obvious, and he's been trying to convince her to go out with him for years, but not quite the same way as James has been trying with Lily.

Lily joined us for our girls' night and she spent a good portion of the night talking about how she couldn't stand James and she couldn't believe he would start telling people that I was spreading lies to people to turn them against him. Apparently he'd been telling people that I was the one who started the petition so technically it was void because it had to be done by someone else in the house with the team member's knowledge. Luckily he was wrong and even if people did believe him they were too relieved to have me back on the team to actually do anything about it. Gabby was less than impressed but this revelation and was all set to go and knock some sense into him, but we managed to distract her with chocolate.

Our girls' night didn't last as long as we had anticipated; apparently Gabby and Susie had gotten up at 5:30 on the Saturday morning to be sure that they would beat me down to the common to arrange their announcement, so they were tired out and couldn't manage to keep their eyes open much after midnight, it also didn't help that Susie actually did fall asleep while we were all still sitting around talking and her snoring made everyone else realise how tired they were. Because I had been well rested the night before, and I hadn't decided to get up at a silly time in the morning, my relatively early night meant that I woke up pretty early on the Sunday. The common room was empty when I got down there, so I decided to make my way down to breakfast; my stomach was demanding something more substantial than chocolate and blood pops.

I was surprised to find Remus already at the table in the Great Hall, "You're up early, everything okay?" he looked like he was ready to drop off at any second but he smiled at me as I sat down opposite him and gave a nod to assure me he was fine,

"Full moon on Tuesday, I never sleep well on the nights leading up to it, Moony keeps me up." I should have remembered about that,

"Sorry, I do usually remember but I guess with all the stuff yesterday it must have slipped my mind." Wow, that sounded incredibly insensitive, I opened my mouth to apologise but he beat me to it,

"Don't worry about it; Gabby's announcement was rather exciting after all. How does it feel to know that everyone wants you back on the team?" I grinned at him,

"Feels pretty darn good if I'm completely honest." Remus returned my smile, but it looked slightly pained and my heart broke for him; I hated knowing what he went through every month, what he would continue going through every month for the rest of his life. My smile fell a little and we both knew why but he decided to ignore it,

"I heard that even your replacement signed; said James was too hard on him to be as good as you, if not better." This new piece of information fulfilled its purpose well; my grin was back in full force.

We continued eating our breakfasts in silence after that, until I remembered something, "You wanted to talk to me about something you read yesterday, I completely forgot, sorry." Remus looked confused; maybe I had dreamt that whole exchange, "Last night? At the portrait hole?" realisation flitted across Remus' face,

"Of course, I'd forgotten too! I'm sure I would have remembered later on, when my brain decides to kick in for the day." I chuckled at his words and waited for him to continue, "I actually left the book upstairs, so relocate to the common room?" I nodded and stuffed the rest of my toast into my mouth, drawing a laugh from the boy, "You could have brought it with you." I glared at him and grabbed a muffin for the trip back to the common room, Remus' laugh got louder when he realised that I finished my toast so I would have more hands for more food to come with us.

The common room was still empty, as was expected at eight o'clock on a Sunday but it was still a relief when I saw the book Remus was holding. I sighed realising what the topic of discussion was going to be, Remus hesitated before sitting down in the armchair next to mine, "We don't have to talk about this is it makes you uncomfortable, I just thought-"

"It's fine Remus, I just don't like talking about it much, people generally treat me differently if I show that I know too much about this particular subject, especially since a lot of it is from experience. Not that I would have to worry about that with you. I'm just not used to talking about I guess, I mean, not even Gabby and Susie know." I shook myself out of it and smiled again, "What is it you wanted to know?" Remus still looked a little hesitant but the nerd in him won out and his thirst for knowledge had him asking,

"It says in here that vampire families can die out and I was just wondering how that can happen when it's been found that vampirism is a dominant gene."

"It is a dominant gene with muggle blood but that seems to where the research stopped, you might be able to guess why... Some people thought it was a little inhumane to use muggles as test subjects to find out whether their children will be infected if they have been but they tolerated it because it was important research, but then when the researchers suggest that they move onto wizarding families it was stopped, because _that_ was taking things too far." We both whipped round to look at the boys' staircase, I'd heard a noise there and clearly Remus did too, but there didn't seem to be anything there so we turned back to each other with embarrassed chuckles,

"Ah, the paranoia that comes with super-human senses." I smiled at him, trying to remember what I'd been saying before the interruption.

"Err, oh! So if a muggle mates with a vampire the children will always be a vampire as well, but if a vampire mates with a witch or wizard it's usually 50/50, some are regular vampires, some are regular wizards, and some are both. These almost always marry other wizards and their children will be slightly less vampiric and have less of the traits. So over time the vampiric blood gets more and more diluted." Remus nodded in understanding of my simple explanation.

"So in your family, that's what happened?" I nodded, "but what about your senses? It can't have been too long since you had a full vampire if you're still affected by the venom."

"It was about four hundred years ago but because we're from such a strong and ancient line occasionally we still get children who are affected by it, like me, Taylor and Joe. My mum and her sister weren't affected, it lies dormant and then suddenly it will crop up again." Remus looked like he was going to ask more but a door closed somewhere overhead, meaning someone would be on their way down, "Sorry, but not now, just in case someone hears?"

"Of course, thank you for all that. It seems so straight-forward but I couldn't make it work in my head, must be Moony. I always get a little slow before-"

"Good morning Remus! Hunt." Sirius has just bounded into the room, demanding Remus' attention, effectively ending our conversation,

"What's got you so happy at this time in the morning Padfoot?"

"I have a plan for revenge!" Sirius' grin was getting bigger; it was making me nervous,

"On who?"

"Can't say."

"Okay, well what's the plan?"

"Can't say."

"Do you need any with it?" this time Sirius didn't respond in the taunting manor he'd been using, but as if he really didn't know,

"… Can't say…" but that didn't make it any less frustrating for Remus, who rolled his eyes at the other boy's behaviour and turned back to me, he was just about to say something but Sirius pulled him up out of his seat, "Escort me to breakfast my kind sir!" Remus shot me an apologetic look before he was dragged away.

About fifteen minutes after they left a very disgruntled looking James came down the stairs, "Hey Ri- Hunt. Have you seen Sirius or Remus this morning?" This was the first civil thing he'd said to me in over a month,

"Sirius dragged Remus down to breakfast; he was all excited about a plan of revenge but couldn't tell Remus about it in front of me." I have two guesses who the plan of revenge is for. I went back to my book but I couldn't help but notice that James was hovering next to the chair I was sitting in, looking rather uncomfortable and really awkward. I waited quietly for a few minutes, expecting him to say something but when he didn't I sighed, "they should still be down there, it wasn't long ago and you've seen how much Sirius eats." I smiled an extremely small smile, I'm not even sure it could be classed as a smile, but it was my best attempt, James nodded and shuffled towards the portrait hole.

The rest of the weekend flew past in a rush of finishing homework assignments for the next week; I spent most of it with Remus and Lily because I had found over the past few weeks that the two of them made for very good study partners. Lily had a few imaginative ways of keeping me motivated, well I say imaginative, they were just treats she'd give me after each piece I got done, it was a great system.

The next morning I realised that it would be extremely wise to be a little wary around Sirius for the day- or longer, because he bounded into potions on time and didn't stop grinning the whole way through the period. The most worrying part of it was that he actually just sat and quietly made the notes we were told to and then he turned in, what was actually, a really good potion and he'd made it on his own and without spiking anyone else's cauldrons.

At the end of the lesson I was walking to Defence Against the Dark Arts with Gabby, Susie and Lily when Sirius suddenly appeared in front of us asking to speak to Lily, she sent us all a confused look but shrugged it off and followed him a little way down the corridor, we stopped to wait but she told us to go on and save her a seat so we just left them to it, but as we turned away Sirius caught my eye and gave me what can only be described as an evil look; a look that wouldn't have been out of place on the face of Bellatrix Black.

When Lily joined us she was absolutely fuming, I'd forgotten what it was like to see her truly angry since James had stopped asking her out, "What did he want?" we still had a few minutes before class started, she would've had plenty of time to tell us, but Lily just shook her head; apparently too angry to discuss it. I look back to where Sirius had just dropped into his seat and he winked at me with a look on his face that unsettled me. It wasn't the same as the look he'd given me before we'd left him with Lily; he was more smug than I'd seen him in a while. He did look a little pained though... But still, it was worse than before.

Professor Andrews let us out early because he needed to escort one of the Hufflepuffs to the hospital wing, Lily had calmed down enough by the time we got to the common room so we started to press her more for the story from earlier. It didn't take us long to break her down enough for her to tell us, "Don't worry about it, it was just a ridiculous rumour he wanted my help with spreading but I think I managed to convince him not to bother." As she said this she was looking fondly down at the wand in her hand and Gabby laughed,

"I thought he was walking funny!" it was true, the bounce from potions had been replaced with a bit of a limp. And that did explain the pained look on his face as he sat down after he spoke to her.

"What did he do?" I'd just gotten back into the common room after dinner that night and Remus was standing in front of me looking like he was about to breathe fire, I'd never seen him looking that angry before. "What did he do?" Remus repeated the question, obviously frustrated by my lack of response the first time, but I could just shake my head,

"Remus I don't know what you're talking about. Who's meant to have done something to whom?" Remus narrowed his eyes, as if trying to figure out whether or not I was telling the truth about not knowing what he was talking about. He seemed to come to the conclusion that I was honestly confused; he let out a sigh and looked rather relieved, clearly someone was meant to have done something to me- then it hit me; Sirius' revenge plan. "What _did_ he do Remus?"

"I don't know Riley, I only know that he rarely gets as happy and excitable as he is today, unless he's planning something or he's accomplished one of his ridiculous plans. And we both know he was planning something and I'm sure you've guessed that you were going to be the recipient of his knew revenge plan. Not that I think he has any right or reason to exact any sort of revenge on you but-" I put my hand on his arm,

"Remus, its ok, I knew he was planning something to do with me but I didn't know he'd already done it. As far as I know I haven't been hexed or cursed or charmed in any way. I feel normal and if you didn't immediately notice anything about me then I'm going to have to go out on a limb and say he hasn't done anything to me." Remus nodded, seeming to agree that there hadn't been anything done to me, he looked even more relieved than before now and he smiled at me, slightly sheepishly,

"Sorry, I was being silly; of course he hasn't done anything to you. You're fine. Did you finish your Charms homework?" I nodded and grinned at him, pleased at the change of subject because Sirius' plans were already weighing on my mind and I didn't want to have to think about what he might have done than I had already,

"Need some help?" Remus smiled a little and nodded,

"I just don't know what I'm doing wrong." We'd been revising the Avis charm from our sixth year but Remus had missed the class, and clearly Sirius and James' notes weren't very comprehensive and had missed out the fact that we'd covered it at all. Meaning that Remus was having trouble with it. "I guess I'll just have to ask Flitwick about it, see if he can help me."

"Don't be silly Remus; I'll help you with it. Show me."

We spent a good few hours practising that and the rest of the charms Flitwick asked us to revise, the rest of them were fine, I needed a bit of help with the bubble-head charm so we had some fun practising that one as well when Remus said he needed a break from trying Avis.

I was explaining the wand movement again when I noticed that he was stifling a yawn, "Am I boring you Lupin?" I demanded in my most McGonagal-ish voice, he grinned at me,

"No, just getting sleepy that's all." That's when I took the time to look around the room and realise that we were the only ones left in the common room,

"Oh. I didn't realise it was that late. Why didn't you say?" he shrugged and looked at little awkward,

"I don't know. I was having fun?" I gave him a funny look, and shrugged,

"Well, I think it's time for me to go to bed, school in the morning and all that." Remus nodded and we both stood to go to our dormitories,

"Thanks for your help Riley." I smiled at him, but I was a little bit surprised when he pulled me into a hug before hurrying up the boys' staircase. I turn and almost ran up the stairs, glad for my bed; I hadn't realised how tired I was until I actually fell into my bed.

I woke up late the next morning and had to rush to breakfast, Lily met me outside the Great Hall looking anxious and apologetic, "I'm so sorry Riley, I told him it was stupid and hexed him, I never thought he would actually do anything. I'm so sorry." I noticed that she was clutching a copy of the daily prophet, and held my hand out so she would hand it over, "Riley, maybe you shouldn't-"

"Give me the damned paper Lily!" she sighed and looked down at the front page or the Prophet before slowly handing it over and looking at her feet.

"Whatever he's said, it really can't be that bad. Don't worry; I'm sure he's said worse. Besides, like you said; it's just a rumour it won't-"


	11. Chapter 11

_**Prestigious Hunt Family- Not What They Seem?**_

_Over the years we have become used to seeing the Hunt family grace our pages, starting from the marriage of Richard Hunt and Adriana Wright, which was highly publicised for its surprising circumstances (See pg 3) and since then the couple have had very public lives, Hunt being an important figure in the Ministry, and a member of the Wizengamot. As well as Wright's many charitable endeavours, which are said to have resulted in better quality of life for many (see pg 4). Of course we have also seen their three children grow and have watched as they have each become exemplary members of the wizarding world; the girls already starting to continue with their mother's works and Joe's years spent on the Quidditch Pitch, and now teaching Transfiguration at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. _

_We have given money and support to Wright's charities and have attended events brought together by Wright. We have followed Hunt's career, some believing that he should be looking at getting the top job at the ministry in coming years (though he has denied his interest). We have cheered for Joe on the quidditch pitch and after his retirement from the game have entrusted him with our children. We have watched as the girls (Riley and Taylor) have grown into lovely young ladies and have wished them well in their schooling(Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and Beauxbaton's Academy of Magic, respectively) and have been eagerly awaiting the days when they are finished with school and can join the wizarding world as adults._

_Many of us have thought of this family as a family to be looked up to, many have been influenced by their behaviour and most of us have, at one point or another, striven to be more like one of the members of the Hunt family. But according to our source, who is close with certain members of the family, has come forward with the information that we have been taken in by them, that they have been deceiving us. It has been brought to our attention that the lovely Adriana Wright is descended from an ancient and dangerous line of Vampires. That the children, who we have all grown to love, have been affected by this disease and now experience vampire like tendencies. _

_This is the family who we have looked up to and loved, and wished the best over the years. And they are, in reality, nothing more than a group of vampires out to make us believe they are just a normal family. We at the Prophet are deeply shocked by this information and will be thinking very carefully before we attend any more of Wright's galas or sending our hard earned money to her charities- most likely cons set up to take money from the honest people of our world._

When I finished reading I slumped against the wall behind me, "How could he do this? Have I actually done something so bad to him that he would tell the whole Wizarding World that I'm a vampire? How could he even know?" It slipped out before I could stop it; I looked up at Lily with wide eyes to see the same expression on her face,

"What?" the question was barely more than a whisper. She turned to look back into the Great Hall; it looked like she was looking for a way to escape from me and tears sprang to my eyes, I guess I had that to look forward to from now on- people looking at me with fear in their eyes. I didn't even try to stop her as she turned and walked quickly back into the Hall.

I didn't know what to do; I couldn't face everyone. Especially not now that I had confirmed it to Lily, she was probably telling everyone that the article is all true. But would it be worse if I ran away? Would that not just make everyone sure that I was, without a doubt, a vampire? Which wasn't even the truth, yes, I was descended from vampires, and yes I did have extra sensitive senses but apart from that I was just a normal teenager, like everyone else in that damned hall.

No. I couldn't run away, not so soon anyway. I stood up straight and got myself together again, preparing to walk into breakfast with my head held high, and I would ignore what everyone had to say, and sit with my friends like normal. Hopefully Lily wouldn't be sitting with Gabby and Susie today, and I would just deny everything.

I turned towards the Great Hall and was just about to go in when suddenly I doubted whether this was the best way to do things, could I just feign ignorance? Pretend I hadn't even seen the stupid paper? No, I had to do this. I had to face them.

I walked into the Great Hall and searched for my friends. Gabby, Susie, and Remus were sitting all staring at the door with identical worried looks on their faces. I was seeking out Joe's gaze when I caught Professor Dumbledore's and he twinkled those eyes of his at me, looking proud. I found Joe's gaze and noticed that Professor Andrew's had laid a hand on his arm, I assumed it was so he didn't come running to meet me, which would have looked very suspicious. I gave him a small smile to let him know that I'd seen the paper but that I was okay, and I could face everyone. He frowned in response but Professor Andrews was able to take his hand back and carry on with his breakfast. "Morning guys."

"Have you seen-?" I nodded,

"Ridiculous wasn't it? I don't know who they thought their source was, but I'm fairly certain they have just helped someone in a fairly elaborate prank." I flashed a glance at Remus, to see if he understood what I was saying but he gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, indicating that he thought I was wrong, that Sirius Black would never do something like this. Gabby and Susie both sighed in relief, I was glad that they believed me rather than the paper but it did make my heart fall to know that they probably wouldn't have accepted me for me if I'd told them it was actually true, which I would; just not there sitting in the Great Hall.

After that we just went about our breakfast as normal and made our way out of the room and up to our first class, which just so happened to be Transfiguration. I smiled at Joe again as we left the Hall and saw that Professor Dumbledore was speaking to him, but Joe was shaking his head; it looked like he was arguing with the older man. Their conversation looked like it had finished badly for Joe; he clearly hadn't won the argument against the Headmaster.

When we were let into the Transfiguration classroom it was about five minutes after the bell had rung and Joe was not in a good mood, once everyone had settled down and he had finished writing what we were doing on the board he turned to us with a thunderous look on his face. "Riley, Professor Dumbledore would like to see you in his office." My mouth dropped open, the Headmaster knew about us; surely he could see how this would look bad if I was called out of class after that article. I stood to leave, "He asked that you bring your things with you." My eyes widened to go with the gaping mouth, but I picked up my bag and left without a word.

"You're going to get it now Vampy."

"He'll never let you stay now that he knows what you are."

"Your kind should be disposed of at birth."

These were just a few of the things that the Slytherin side of the room shouted at me on my way out. Tears came to my eyes again for the second time that morning. I heard Joe shouting for silence as the door closed behind me, I guessed this must have been what he and Professor Dumbledore were arguing about at breakfast.

The headmaster met me at the bottom of the stairs leading up to his office, a good thing too since I had no idea where to even start guessing the password for the gargoyle. I sat in the chair he gestured me into, waiting to see what he had to say. I figured it wouldn't be anything too bad, he knew about out ancestry before Joe started his first year, then he let me in and brought Joe back as a professor so there was no way he could be about to kick me out. "I just wanted to know how you're doing, after the Prophet this morning." He wasn't twinkling at me anymore, he was frowning a little bit, and that was what got me worried.

"I'm doing okay, I've told my friends that it isn't true, they'll hopefully start spreading the word and it'll all blow over?" I knew I shouldn't have been asking him that but I needed the reassurance that this wasn't going to be hanging over me for the rest of the year, his frown got a little deeper with this information though,

"Why did you do that? Do you not trust that you have chosen your friends well enough that they would accept you for yourself?" I'd heard about this from James in past years; Professor Dumbledore has a way of knowing what you're thinking and making you talk about things that you'd really rather not. Making you tell him about your insecurities and find your own way to overcome them. I swear if I didn't know any better I'd think that he was some sort of evil genius- of course he wasn't though, he defeated Grindelwald after all.

"I know I've chosen them well and I do intend to tell them the truth but I just couldn't do it in the Great Hall surround by the rest of the school, who were already talking about me and speculating whether or not it's true." He looked at me with a kind of penetrating stare, one I'd also heard about from James, and I just felt like I could tell him the rest of what was troubling me,

"I told Lily that it's true; I didn't mean to, it kind of just slipped out, and you should have seen how scared she looked. She couldn't get away from me fast enough. I didn't want to tell the rest of them because I didn't want them to have the same reaction, even though I've known them so much better for so much longer than I've known Lily but… they were so relieved when I told them it wasn't true." My vision was blurring so the headmaster turned a little fuzzy but I could still see the look of pity on his face.

"Why did you call me here now? It'll make things look worse, like you believe it and are going to kick me out or something." My eyes widened again, I hadn't meant to say that. "I'm so sorry Professor, I don't know why I said that." But to my surprise the headmaster chuckled,

"Of course you're curious about my reasoning, and of course this doesn't come as a surprise to me but there are certain- people- who would be expecting me to speak to you in light of this revelation. That is the only reason you're here just now and not later in the day, your brother also pointed out to me that it would make it look worse but I think that if the school knows I have spoken to you and you are still here they will come to the conclusion that this article has no merit." I frowned but nodded, it did make sense and maybe it would make people think it wasn't true but still- it felt like he was throwing me under a bus to appease a group of unknown people. "Now I think that has been a sufficient length of time, you may return to your lesson now."

It was only halfway through the lesson when the headmaster dismissed me from his office, I still didn't really understand but I had other things I needed to think about. The whole class turned to stare at me when I got back to Transfiguration, until Joe snapped at them to get back to work, it seemed that no one wanted to get on his bad side when he was in this mood; not even the Slytherins. I sat down and caught up on what I'd missed; we were just making notes from the book, Joe obviously wasn't in the mood to teach. At the end of the lesson he asked me to stay behind, I'd been planning to anyway but smiled and nodded anyways. I noticed that Severus Snape seemed to be hovering around the doorway after everyone else had left and frowned at him, when he noticed my look he sneered and went on his way. Joe cast a muffling charm on the room so that we wouldn't be overheard but anyone outside the door, he must have noticed Snape's lingering as well. "What did Dumbledore want?"

"To see if I was okay after this morning, and to advise me that I should just tell my friends instead of keeping it from them any longer. Also he said that he wanted to speak to me straight away to keep some people happy... probably the governors or something." Joe didn't look too pleased by this information but he didn't say anything about it.

"Do you have any idea who this could have been? Have you told anyone?" I shook my head,

"Well I did tell Remus but he wouldn't tell anyone else, you know that."

"And how can you be sure about that? Maybe someone found out about him and he leaked this so that his secret wouldn't come as such big news." My mouth dropped open,

"How can you even think that? Have you met that boy? There is no way he would do something like that! He would rather have the whole world know about him rather than tell anyone of his friends' secrets, and considering who his friends are there would be a fair few of them floating around."

"Exactly! Think who his friends are, maybe he told them and they decided it would be funny; didn't you have a fight with James this year? And everyone knows Sirius Black has never been your biggest fan. How do you know that one of them didn't do this as some sort of prank or a form of amusement for them- you've seen what they do for fun, you told me about that time with Snape in your fifth year." I shook my head, but something in my face must have told him what he wanted to know, "You think it was Black and Potter don't you?" I shook my head again but my eyes, which had filled with tears again, gave me away, "I'm going to kill them! They just don't think about anything before they just go on and have a jolly old time ruining people's lives!" he was pacing back and forth across the room looking like he was ready to go out and hex someone.

"Joey listen to me, it wasn't them. It couldn't have been. James and Sirius don't know about us, when I was speaking to Remus about it no one else was there…" I suddenly remembered something about the morning when I was talking to Remus about everything; there had been a noise on the stairs. It was Sirius, I had thought it was him but now that I had proof I wasn't sure what to do with it.

I got up to leave the room "I have to go…"

"Riley wait, what's wrong?" I just shook my head and walked out of Joe's office, I needed to think.

Remus had told me why Sirius hated me so much, and I could understand that those reasons would make him not want to speak to me too much at school and he wouldn't want his best friend to also be my best friend, but there is no way that he could justify ruining my whole family just because James would occasionally turn to me for advice rather than him. This would ruin my dad's chances for any future promotion at the ministry, my mum's charity work would be over, Joe's career as a professor would never go further than the end of the year, and Taylor and I's careers would never even take off; no matter what we want to do.

I had to talk to Sirius, he needed to explain himself. I didn't even care if he denied it to everyone else, I knew it was him and I wanted to know why.

**(AN: so I had some trouble with the actual article bit, but I don't think it ended up too badly :/ its possibly a little bit rambly and stuff but it was a lot worse before my re-edit :P Also just so you know... I really don't like a certain Headmaster… that's why he's possibly not painted in the best light here, in case you were thinking he was slightly out of canon but still, I had a bit of trouble getting what I wanted him to say right... I'm not too happy with the way that conversation wound up but can't find a way to make it better… ahhh this is rubbish definitely not my best work, so apologies for this chapter but I just cannot find a way to make it better. Also I'm pretty sure the tenses are a bit messy, so that's something I need to work on. So, sorry about the chapter.. I'll do better next time )**


	12. Chapter 12

I waited until lunch to speak to him; I didn't want to do this in front of everyone so speaking to him in class wasn't going to work for me. We didn't have the same class before lunch so I ended up waiting for him outside the Great Hall, much like he had done weeks before, I heard his laugh before I saw him and stepped away from the wall and into his path. His grin fell a little when he saw me in front of him but it quickly grew back when he noticed the look on my face. I didn't have to say anything to get him to follow me out of the way of the rest of the school, I led him to an empty classroom and he raised an eyebrow at me as I waited for him to go in. "Why did you do it? I know you hate me but I can't figure out what I've done that is so bad it made you think that doing that was an appropriate retaliation." Sirius' grin morphed into a smirk,

"And what makes you think it was me Hunt? What makes you think that I feel you're worth all the effort of contacting the paper just to ruin you?" I shook my head,

"I'm not stupid Black, I know it was you! Who else would have done something like that? You're the only person I know who is even capable of something like that! But I want you to know that you haven't just ruined my future; you've ruined my dad's future at the ministry, you've ruined the futures of all the people who will miss out on my mum's help, you've ruined Joe's future as a professor because even though Dumbledore isn't bothered the governors will never allow him to stay here, and you've ruined Taylor's she hasn't even finished school yet and she already won't be able to get a job! Do you not realise that your actions have consequences? That even if you think that something will be absolutely hilarious at the time you bloody well need to think past that moment of hilarity and consider the bigger picture because, and I know this will be hard for you to understand, _not everything in this world was put here for your amusement Sirius Black_. I hope you're happy with yourself." This wasn't really how I had planned on this conversation going, I'd just wanted to find out why he did it. I hadn't intended on yelling at him about it and showing him just how much it had affected me and how it would continue to have an effect.

"Who's Taylor? I've only ever heard you mention Joe." I rolled my eyes, but of course that would be the part of my rant he picked up on; the mention of a girl.

"She's my sister you moron! Is that all you have to say?" Sirius' eyebrows rose again,

"I didn't know you had a sister, is she hot?" my mouth fell open,

"We're twins, and you just ruined her chance at a future so you've got no chance. Besides she goes to school in France... surely you've read about her in the Prophet? It mentioned her in the article this morning." The smirk was back on his face, figures... I was delusional to think he would feel bad about what he did.

"Well actually I didn't have anything to do with this article. I was actually rather surprised when I read it myself. I had no idea it would go this far. All I did was mention it to one other person and this is what they did with the information. And I think you need to be looking for someone a little bit closer. I mean I'm in a whole different dorm." He sent me a meaningful glance and sauntered out of the room.

What? I had no idea what he meant by that. Well he was obviously implying that it was one of the girls in the dorm but I know that none of them would do that to me. Gabby and Susie were so shocked by the article this morning to have had anything to do with it. And although we had just made up with Lily, Alice and Dorcas there was no way it could have been one of them, they had no reason to do something like that. Sirius was the only person who had such a problem with me.

After I'd spoken to Sirius I wasn't really sure what to do next, I hadn't thought further than getting the truth out of him and I hadn't even managed that. As I walked towards the Great Hall a group of Ravenclaws started whispering and moving away from me, as if they were worried I was going to attack them or something ridiculous like that, but then I suppose that wasn't such a ridiculous idea to them considering what they'd read that morning.

I ended up waiting for Joe in his office, knowing that he wouldn't want to be in the Great Hall for too long either. I wasn't waiting long and he didn't look at all surprised to see me waiting there, in fact he'd brought me sandwiches as he hadn't seen me at lunch. We sat quietly together, he was marking sixth year essays and I was doing some first year test papers. I wasn't really concentrating and he noticed, "You alright Riles?" I looked up, startled by the sound of my name,

"Yeah I'm fine." We both knew I wasn't but neither of us mentioned it, he wasn't alright either. The silence was back and lasted another five minutes or so, "I think I'm going to go and stay with Tay for a while, she's been asking me to visit her at Beauxbaton's for ages, I think I'm going to see if Dumbledore will let me go... I think he'll be okay with it considering... And then by the time I get back everyone will be talking about something else anyway and this will have all blown over." I don't think I really believed that but it was what I wanted to believe.

"You can't do that Riley! They'll think they've won if you run away from it. If you leave they'll never let it go, you'll be the girl who ran away from one bit of bad press. You have to admit, we always knew it would have to happen someday, they've always been on our side up until now, but the press always turns eventually." I shook my head,

"We've done nothing wrong, why would we be expecting this when we've done nothing? Our family has only ever done good things for the wizarding world! That's why we get good press! Not because we were the flavour of the month Joe! Whatever, I don't want to be at Hogwarts right now, and it isn't up to you. Mum and dad will be fine with it as long as Dumbledore is. I'm going to see Tay." Joe put his quill down and covered my hand with his, in an effort to calm me down. It worked, there was no point in me getting worked up at Joe, he was just as affected by this as I was.

"At least wait until the weekend? You've got the Ravenclaw match on Saturday and they've only just gotten you back on the team, you can't miss your first match back on the team now can you?" I smiled in spite of myself; I was looking forward to getting back on a broom, it had been a while.

"Fine, but if the whispering and insults haven't stopped by then I'm going to France and you won't be able to stop me a second time." Joey nodded, seeming to accept the deal; he was confident that it would have blown over by then with the build-up to what was usually an exciting quidditch match. "I have to go, I have Potions."

I made it down to the dungeon without any major incidents, people pointed and whispered things about me but I tried my best to ignore them and keep moving without letting them see how much all of this was upsetting me. I don't think it worked. When the hand shot out of an empty potions workroom I all but growled at the person who grabbed me, the only person I'd ever had this sort of encounter with was Sirius and I was not in the mood to have another little chat with him. But when I turned round it wasn't Sirius' face I was looking up at. "Remus? What?"

"I didn't have anything to do with it! I didn't tell anyone what you told me, not even a bit of it I promise!" my eyes narrowed, he must have changed his mind since that morning,

"I know you didn't Remus, that's what I told Joe. It didn't even cross my mind that you might have something to do with this, this one was all Sirius and I know that. So why drag me into a classroom and make me late for class?" Remus blushed and smiled a small smile,

"I just wanted to talk to you but you've been with Joe all day. This is the first chance I've had." I didn't say anything, waiting for him to continue, when he didn't I turned to leave the room but he grabbed my arm again to stop me going, "willyougotoHogsmeadewithme?" I could feel my forehead creasing with confusion as I tried to work out what he had just asked me,

"Sorry Remus you're going to have to try again…" he dropped my arm and took a deep breath before looking me in the eye and repeating himself,

"Will you go to Hogsmeade with me? I know it's still a couple of weeks away but I was just wondering if you'd go with me, like as a date." My mouth dropped open in what I'm sure was a very attractive way, I wasn't sure what to expect when he dragged me in here but this definitely wasn't it.

"Remus, I've just been outed as a vampire to the whole wizarding world; I don't think I'm going to be going to Hogsmeade any time soon. Everyone hates me now, I wouldn't be welcome anywhere anyway; it would be pointless to even bother. Sorry." I tried to leave again, I hated that he'd put me in that position; I loved him dearly but never in the same way that I loved James but this time he moved to stand between me and the door,

"But that's exactly it! You're the only person around here who knows what it's like to be like me, well not exactly like me but to be treated the way I will be once everyone finds out."

"Remus, no offence but our situations are not the same. You have the boys; they would never reject you like they have me. When Sirius found out about you he set out to accomplish an extremely complex and dangerous piece of magic so you wouldn't have to be alone, when he found out about me he went straight to the papers so that I would be ruined and would never be able to get a job or have any sort of future outside of Hogwarts. And even if we were in the same situation it wouldn't be a good enough reason to start a relationship." He looked so sad when I left him there but I knew I'd made the right decision. There was also the fact that I'd only just gotten Gabby back, I didn't want to lose her again so soon.

Professor Slughorn wasn't impressed with my lateness but someone snickered and hissed, "Watch out professor, she might drain the life out of you if you mess with her." The professor had turned pale and bustled off to the other side of the room, making the giggles throughout the room grow in volume. I sat in the back of the room on my own, avoiding the questioning and worried glances that Gabby and Susie were shooting at me, I didn't want to have to tell them, I didn't want to lose them like I'd already lost James and Lily this year.

It seemed ridiculous that this was happening to me; part of me believed that it was all a dream and that I would wake up and we would all be friends again. It was such a naïve thing to think but it was better than thinking of the reality of the situation.

Remus came into the room about five minutes after I did; he sat down in front of James and Sirius, partnering Peter. "Oh thank Merlin you're okay! When you didn't turn up I was worried that Hunt got you! She was looking a little bit _thirsty_ when I saw her after lunch, if you get what I mean." I saw Remus and James glare at Sirius' lame attempt at a joke… James was glaring, well that was a development.

The fact that James hadn't been amused by Sirius' jokes at my expense was enough to make me think that maybe it would all be okay in the end. If James could forgive me and see past this then maybe others could too, maybe I could be honest with my friends but still have them as friends.

It was with this new attitude that I decided to sit Gabby and Susie down that evening after dinner and tell them the truth about my family.

The rest of the day was spent thinking about exactly how I was going to tell them, trying to anticipate their reactions, and hoping that it would end well; that they wouldn't abandon me. My professors didn't seem to mind the fact that I wasn't paying any attention at all in class, most of them seemed to understand that I had other things on my mind at the moment. Some of them were, like Slughorn, acting like this was the first they'd heard about the whole thing, but I know that Dumbledore told them all when Joe started his first year, so these were the ones that infuriated me.

I didn't go to dinner that evening, and it wasn't because I couldn't stand having people staring and whispering; I'd gotten used to that as the day wore on, it was because there was no way I was going to be able to eat anything anyway so why bother with the trek all the way down there?

"We missed you at dinner Riley, where were you?" Susie was looking at me with a curious look on her face,

"I wasn't hungry, can I talk to you guys?" they both nodded, "Upstairs?" before waiting for their responses I got up and headed up the stairs to our dorm, I had to do this quickly before I changed my mind again.

Their reactions were pretty much what I was expecting, they were shocked and upset. Shocked that it was all true and upset that I hadn't trusted them enough to tell them sooner and because someone had told everyone, "Do you know who did it?"

"It was Black. I don't know how he found out or why he would do it but I know it was him." Gabby didn't look convinced but Susie looked livid, something I wasn't used to from her, "But there isn't anything I can do about it, no one would take my word over his, not now that they know about me. I tried asking him about it but he denied it-"

"Well then maybe it wasn't him? I mean, something like this would be huge for him right? Something he would own up to in a heartbeat, so if he's saying that it wasn't him I'm kind of inclined to believe him. It must have been someone else." I couldn't believe what I was hearing, Gabby was usually one to blame Sirius for the smallest things, she was always someone you could count on to listen to complaints about him, and here she was defending him when this was the biggest thing he'd ever done to one of us.

"How can you say that? It's so obvious that it was him! I mean, the only person I've ever told was Remus and Sirius would have been able to get it out of him, or maybe he was listening to us talking about it. And no one else hates me like he does." Gabby raised an eyebrow,

"So you told _Remus _and no one else but it _must_ have been Sirius? That doesn't make sense; with that explanation you should be blaming Remus for this." I snorted, it a very ladylike manor,

"You think it was Remus? He's my friend, he wouldn't do that." Gabby jumped to her feet, and that's when I realised that I was standing as well,

"He's the only one who knew!"

"Why are you defending Black anyway? You've always hated him!"

"It isn't fair for him to be blamed for this when there is no way it was him!" Susie was still sat on the bed between us, looking from Gabby to me and back again; like someone watching a tennis match,

"It wasn't fair for him to do what he did but you don't seem to be pissed off about that! You've liked Remus forever how can you think he would do that?"

"Would you two both just stop it? There is no point in you two fighting about this when we're probably never going to know who it was! If it was Sirius then I don't think he would have done _this_; he's never done anything so malicious before, he might have told someone but he wouldn't have released it to the _Prophet_. But there is no way that Remus did this Gabby, think about it. He's never been anything but decent to all of us, no way was it him." Gabby and I turned our glares from each other to Susie and she threw her arms up and stormed out of the room. Gabby was next, she stormed into the bathroom, which left me to stand in the middle of the room with nowhere else to storm off to so I just slumped into my bed and pulled the curtains closed.

I spent the rest of the week on my own. Gabby was with Sirius, James, Remus and Peter. Susie was with the other girls. I turned up early for most classes and waited until everyone else had left before leaving, I found that was the best way to avoid been seen by people in the corridors. I stayed behind after every Transfiguration class to talk to Joe, and every time I did this Snape would hover around the door looking shift. In those few days there had been a number of times when he had been sitting close to me in the library and I would look up from my work to find him looking like he wanted to say something but he never did, he would just sneer and either pack up his stuff and leave or he would go back to what he was doing. It was strange.

I thought the weekend would never arrive; time seemed to be passing so slowly. But finally it was time for the quidditch match against Ravenclaw and from how well practise had been going it was going to be a good game.

It was a good game for the most part; I spent a lot of the match avoiding the bludgers, which would have been fine if most of them hadn't been coming from Sirius. I did manage to score a fair few times though. The match lasted for almost four hours, one of the longest Hogwarts has seen in years eventually there were only a few goals in it and finally our seeker caught the snitch. The Ravenclaws weren't too happy but they did still have more points on the board than the Hufflepuff team so they were still in with a chance at the cup.

At the end of the match I went with the rest of the team to the side lines where there were drinks bottles waiting for us, I gratefully downed a mouthful of the drink and promptly spat it back out. Someone had replaced my water with dragon's blood, well I assume it was dragon's blood, I don't know how to tell the difference. I looked up, everyone saw me do it, they were whispering again. I caught Sirius' eye and he did a mime of someone chugging a drink, tears started to blur my vision and James, who was standing next to me, grabbed the bottle out of my hand and banished it while thrusting his own drink at me.

I turned and ran away from the pitch; I didn't stop running until I made it up to Gryffindor tower and into the dorm. I started to through things haphazardly into my trunk, I didn't care what Joe thought was best; I was going to France. I didn't notice Lily come into the room until she was pulling me away from my trunk and into a hug, I didn't know how much I'd needed that until it was happening.

**I know this chapter is rubbish and rushed and too long and extremely repetitive but I can't make it any better any suggestions would be great and well done for even sticking through to the end of the chapter, hopefully the next one will be better.**

**Also, I'm in need of some help. I have things that I want/need to happen at Hogwarts while Riley is away in France but I don't know how to write them since I want the whole story to be in Riley's POV. So if you do have any ideas either stick 'em in a review or pm me with them. **

**Thanks guys and sorry for the kinda lame chapter. **


	13. Chapter 13

I relaxed into Lily's hug and she managed to calm me down somehow and guide me over to sit on my bed, "what're you doing Riley?" I sniffled a little, and kept my eyes on the floor,

"I'm going to France to stay with my sister for a couple of weeks. I was going to leave at the beginning of the week but Joe managed to convince me to stick it out for the quidditch match. He thought it would all be forgotten by now, but that obviously didn't happen."

"Are you sure leaving is the best thing for you to do? I mean I know things are bad right now but it could get better, no one knows anything for sure right? So they're just rumours at right now." I smiled what must have been the saddest looking smile ever, and shook my head,

"None of us denied it and by not denying it we've essentially confirmed the truth of it, there would be no point in even trying to tell people they're wrong about us now. It's too late." Lily looked incredibly sad about that and I hated it.

"There's something I need to tell you-" but I didn't get to hear what I assumed would be an apology for her reaction to finding out the article was true because Joe burst through the door and Susie came running after him,

"I tried to tell him you wouldn't want to speak to him but he didn't listen and came up here anyways."

"Miss Evans, Miss Samuels, if you'll excuse us please. I need to speak to my sister." Lily and Susie nodded and Lily gave me one last squeeze before following Susie out the door.

He waited until the door snapped shut before he started to speak, "Riley you can't just run away from this! It'll still be here when you get back and it'll be there in France. Tay will be going through the same thing you are over there, the only differences will be the language and the fact that I won't be there for you!" my eyes narrowed at his words,

"If she is going through the same thing then she's going through it alone and that isn't fair! This is all my fault and I want to be there for her. You don't need me, no one is switching your drinks for blood; you're a professor and even the people who believe that its true still respect you because you're good at what you do. Hell, there are even girls who fancy you now because apparently there's something sexy about a man who drinks blood." He sent me a disbelieving look, "I don't understand it either but it seems to be true. But Tay and I are teenagers and it's a whole different thing for us to have this label."

"But-"

"No. I told you last time that you wouldn't be able to stop me after the quidditch match. That I was definitely leaving if things didn't get better and they haven't so I'm going." With that I threw the last few things into my trunk and slammed it shut before shrinking it and shoving it into my jacket pocket. "I'll see you at home for Christmas." I gave him a hug before leaving the dorm.

Joe followed me down into the common room and some third year who didn't realise Joe was my brother wolf-whistled but stopped when James smacked him up the side of his head. He was finally starting to get back to something resembling normal, shame that it didn't happen before things got so bad I was leaving.

Dumbledore didn't look surprised to see me when I turned up at his office door, but then he never seemed to be particularly surprised about anything. He was happy to let me leave, he didn't even suggest waiting a little bit longer to see if things changed, he actually seemed to think that it was a good idea for me to go away for a couple of weeks. "After the trouble at the quidditch pitch I thought you may want to visit your sister, your brother mentioned it at the beginning of the week. I've spoken to Madame Charlot and she has allowed Taylor to have time off lessons for the duration of your stay there. She is, as you are, and exemplary student and can be trusted, as you will be, to get her work done in that time." I nodded and Dumbledore gestured to the fireplace and continued, "You are looking for Madame Charlot's study, Beauxbaton's Academy of Magic." He offered me a pot of floo powder,

"Thank you professor, I appreciate this. I just can't deal with all of this here." He nodded as I was spun out of the room and into the floo network.

Floo powder had never been my favourite way to travel, especially for international travel. It was a lot of spinning and so many flashes of other people's homes along the way, and you would always end up filthy and, more often than not, choking on ashes. Having said that, it is the quickest way to get anywhere without a licence to apparate.

After about five minutes of constant motion I came to an abrupt stop and fell forwards out of the fireplace in the Headmistress' Study in France, "As graceful as ever I see." I looked up from the floor and my face split into the first true, happy smile I'd worn in what felt like weeks. Taylor had evidently been waiting for me to arrive and she stuck a hand out to help me up off the floor. She caught me in a hug, "So how have you been doing Lee?" her playful smirk hadn't fallen into a much more serious expression, I shrugged not really wanting to discuss it in front of the headmistress,

"How about you?" she replicated my shrug; she clearly wanted to wait until we were alone as well to talk about everything that had been going on.

"Bonjour Ms Hunt. Professor Dumbledore told me zat you 'ave been 'aving problems at 'ogwarts since ze article was published, I told 'im I would be 'appy to 'ave you 'ere until you feel you are ready to return, zat if you are anyzing like your sister it would be a pleasure to 'ave you." I smiled at the professor,

"Thank you Madame Charlot, I really do appreciate it that you would let me stay here. But I do have to admit that Taylor is the smart twin." Taylor was nodding her agreement beside me and the headmistress laughed,

"We shall see about zat Ms hunt. I'm sure you 'ave much to speak about, go ahead, I will see you at dinner." I smiled at the kind dismissal, it was a lot less abrupt an ending to a meeting than one with Dumbledore.

There were a lot of differences between Beauxbaton's and Hogwarts; the uniforms, the fact that the staircases didn't move, the lack of portraits on the walls, there were no ghosts floating around the Palace. But the most notable difference, in my opinion was that no one was staring and whispering, some were looking at us with curious looks on their faces but I figured that was possibly because I wasn't in a uniform and because Tay and I and pretty much identical.

Taylor had told me about the school before, of course, but actually seeing the place was different to how I'd imagined it; I'd been picturing it to be a lot more like the castle I was used to but this place was a lot more majestic than the Hogwarts castle. The difference that Taylor liked to point out the most was that while I had to stay in a dormitory with five other girls for my whole time at Hogwarts, here it was only compulsory to share a room from first to fourth year and then after that they were given the option to either stay in communal dorms or to have a room to themselves, and if they chose to stay with roommates they would be able to choose how many and who they were. Up until this year it had been something I was jealous of, I'd have given almost anything to have Lily, Dorcas and Alice out of our dormitory.

Of course, given the choice most people chose to have their own rooms, Taylor had decided that she missed the privacy she was given back at home. She liked to have her own space to get on with her homework, and she'd always been quite a light sleeper so sharing was hard for her. I wasn't jealous anymore though, it was a blessing that we would be able to talk about everything without having to shut out her roommates.

The first place she showed me in the school was her bedroom, it wasn't too dissimilar to the dorms at Hogwarts but it was a lot more personal and feminine than the stone walls I was used to. "Oh good, Madame Charlot had another bed added for you. That'll beat sleeping on the floor." She paused and showed me where I could unpack my things, there had been drawers added to her dresser and her wardrobe had been extended to cater for another person, I opened my trunk and started to sort my things out into the drawers, "How have you been Lee? I don't think I've heard from you since before Halloween." A sudden grin erupted on her face but I turned back to my trunk before she continued; I knew what she was going to ask about, "How're things with James? Has he finally given up on that Lily girl? Are you two together yet?" I shook my head, and then to my horror burst into tears,

"He hates me Tay. Everyone hates me. It's been so horrible there. How have things here been?" I didn't want to start explaining all about what was going on with me before I even knew how she'd been coping with it all, I turned back to her to see her looking at little uncomfortable.

"Actually things haven't been too bad here, I mean obviously everyone was shocked at first but they've all known me for years and they know that I'm not dangerous, everyone seems to understand that. They're kind of more interested in what effect it does have on us and how come we aren't 'real' vampires." My mouth dropped open in surprise, that hadn't been what I was expecting; I'd thought she would be an outcast like me, that people were making mean comments and trying to avoid her, treating her like she was something to be feared. "Are things at Hogwarts really that bad?" I nodded with what must have been a pretty miserable look on my face.

"Everyone stares and whispers about me. My friends aren't bothered but that's only four people out of the whole school, not including Joey." I was starting to feel pretty sorry for myself as I told her about my year at school so far, I left out what happened at the quidditch pitch; she didn't need to know exactly how bad things had gotten, she got enough of an idea without that.

"At least James was being somewhat normal again before you left thought, and you've still got Susie and Gabby. And Remus sounds like a great guy. He did have a point you know; you both understand what the other is going through- kind of." I didn't say anything for a while and neither did Taylor. "How can you be trying to get James together with Lily? You've been in love with him forever and she sort of hates him…"

"She doesn't hate him really, she just doesn't want to believe that she really likes him in case he changes his mind or it turns out to be a prank or that he was just chasing her because he couldn't have her when he could've had any other girl. She was really starting to warm up to him and I ruined all that on Halloween and then with the quidditch thing. James was right." She stared at me and sighed in an exasperated sounding way,

"The halloween thing was not your fault! You thought he knew it was you. As for the quidditch thing, you know I think you'd be better off staying on the ground anyway but if you must play that's up to you, but it wasn't your fault either. That was him being an idiot, not doubt influenced by Black." I nodded.

"You know what, you're right, he's been being an arse all year, and I just need to move on. I'll get him and Lily together and stop moping about it, me and James were never going to happen and it's time that I accept that." I was a lot happier once I'd made this decision. I'd made a similar one after the Halloween debacle but that was when I was trying to make James happy, this time it was for me; this time I was going to make a much bigger effort with it. "James and Lily will be together by graduation!" Tay looked like she wanted to say something but I grinned at her and bounced off the bed we'd been sitting on and over to the desk which looked like it had been added to the room for my use, "I need to write to Gabby and Susie, I didn't even tell them I was leaving, I just left without saying goodbye or anything." Tay made a huffing noise and moved over to the other desk to start some homework.

I didn't understand, was this not what she'd wanted? For me to stop being sad about the James situation? That was what she'd said, basically. That he was acting like a prick and I needed to move on.

I spent the rest of the afternoon writing my letters to Gabby, Susie and Lily. I'd considered writing to Remus as well but after the way he'd been avoiding me I wasn't really sure what to say to him. At dinner Madame Charlot announced that I would be staying with Taylor for a couple of weeks because of our family circumstances and because we wanted to be together during what had been a hard time for our family, the rest of the students seemed to just accept it. There was no one calling out that it was unfair that I should be allowed to stay during term time when no one else was allowed to have people to stay, no one said that if Taylor was having time out of lessons than others should be allowed the same privilege and no one commented that we were getting preferential treatment because of the article.

I couldn't get over how different it was from Hogwarts, I'd been expected the people to be just the same; just as immature, close-minded and mean, but most had just nodded in acknowledgement of the headmistress' words and some had either sent us sympathetic smiles or had waved in a friendly greeting. I mentioned to Taylor how shocked I was by these differences but she just gave me a disbelieving look, "I told you earlier that they'd all been really good about it all."

"I know, I just didn't realise how good until I'd seen it for myself.." She smiled and nodded, seeming to understand what I meant.

"The kids here are a lot most open-minded than in Britain, a lot less prejudiced. I think that's why Voldemort hasn't made the crossing yet; his ideals wouldn't take quite as well over here, he'd end up with a lot more opposition than supporters for his trouble." I nodded, my mouth too full with dinner to respond in any other way.

The first few days of my visit were spent doing the work we'd be missing in classes and catching up with happier goings on in our lives, she was interested to hear how my newly found friendship with Lily was fairing; she didn't believe that we could all suddenly just become friends again after four years of fighting. She told me about her latest boyfriend; a sweet, extremely handsome French boy by the name of Lucas, she told me all about their first date and the little gifts he'd given her. She was convinced he was 'the one', and while I'd heard that from her before this one seemed to be different somehow, but in a way I couldn't explain from the outside.

I also met a few of her friends, including a girl called Monica who reminded me of a mixture of Lily and Susie; she was studious and extremely stubborn, but then she was also a little bit weird at times. There was another girl called Jennifer who was so much like Taylor that it was a little strange at first, if I hadn't known any better I would have thought they were sisters.

There was also a lovely boy named Matthew, or Hewie for short, who was pretty much in love with Taylor but she was either oblivious to his interest or was playing dumb because of Lucas. I was inclined to believe the latter because he was being pretty obvious with his flirting, but when I mentioned it to her one night she just shrugged, "He's like that with everyone, he was just as flirty with you as he was with me." I grinned but shook my head, she really didn't see it. But apart from meeting these friends and doing schoolwork we didn't do much else apart from talk about mindless things, which was good; it was what I'd wanted; to get away from everything.

After three days I still hadn't gotten replies from Susie or Gabby, I wasn't sure if it was because they were mad at me or if they just hadn't gotten my letters yet, I was really hoping it was the second reason. I did get a letter from Lily at breakfast, which was a nice surprise; at least I was hearing something from Hogwarts even if it wasn't coming from either of my best friends.

_Dear Riley, _

_Things at Hogwarts haven't been quite the same since you've been gone; it's far too quiet in the common room and the dorm. _

_Gabby isn't too impressed that Remus asked you out before you left but she isn't blaming you this time, he explained it to her but he wasn't sure why she was so mad; he's a little bit clueless when it comes to Gabby. She's been spending more time Black, which I'm sure will not end well for anyone. Susie and Alice have been fighting again, I don't see why Alice doesn't understand that it isn't okay to be trying to convince someone to breakup with their boyfriend because she likes him, I have tried speaking to her about it but it didn't work. Dorcas is mad that Black has been spending so much time with Gabby. When are you coming home? I need some intelligent conversation! _

_I don't know what's been going on but the Marauders are hardly speaking to each other; Remus spends as much time away from the others as he possibly can, Black has calmed down a bit since the quidditch thing but I have heard him telling people that you're gone because you attacked a Ravenclaw third year- I gave him detention every night this week for that. Potter has been trying to find out who leaked that story to the Prophet; he doesn't believe that Black would do something like that. I think I'm going to have to tell him what Black said to me the day before the article came out, I was trying to keep out of it; let them sort it out for themselves, but I don't think I'm going to be able to. Although I don't know why he would believe me; he knows how much I hate that boy. _

_I also thought you might want to know that Professor Dumbledore announced your trip to France, he said that you'd gone to stay with family on his advice because of what was revealed in the article. Someone asked why Professor Hunt is still here when the article was about him too, he didn't answer straight away but he said it was because he's been here longer and they are sure beyond all doubt that he is not a danger to anyone. Your brother stormed out of the Great Hall in such a rage I was sure he could've attacked Dumbledore! I completely understand though, he made out that they aren't sure whether it's safe to have you at school, which is absolutely ridiculous! _

_I hope you're having a good time in France, tell your sister 'Hi' from all of us. And I really do hope you'll be coming home soon. _

_Love Lily xxx_

I sighed and showed the letter to Tay, she didn't take the last bit too well either, "I think I need to write to Joey, in case he does something stupid." Taylor nodded and said something about needing to go and speak to Madame Charlot.

_Joey,_

_I just got a letter from Lily telling me about what Professor Dumbledore said. Please tell me you haven't done anything stupid. If you lose this job it isn't going to be easy for you to get another one now. You probably shouldn't go storming out of anymore dinners. _

_Love Riley xxx_

That would do, he'd always had a hot temper; we all did, but it was usually easy enough to get him to see rationally. I sent the letter off with a much longer letter back to Lily telling her that I would probably be back at the end of the next week and assuring her that I knew she would be able to handle things for me until then. Taylor still wasn't back by dinner time so I went down to the dining hall without her; I'd managed to learn my way around the palace pretty quickly so the lack of a guide wasn't a problem. I'd already finished by the time Taylor pulled me out of my seat, she had a huge grin on her face and when I looked past her I got an identical one, "Mum! Dad! What're you doing here?"

"Madame Charlot flooed us here to discuss Taylor." I frowned, not understanding; Taylor was a perfect student, there was no reason for the headmistress to need to speak to our parents. It seemed that Taylor could no longer hold in her excitement and she happily informed me what had gone on during the meeting,

"I'm transferring to Hogwarts, Lee!"

"You're kidding!" she shook her head still grinning,

"I went to Madame Charlot this morning and asked if I could do it and she flooed Hogwarts to speak to your deputy head, she's in charge of all that apparently, and she said she thought it would be good for us to all be together and that she completely understood that we didn't want professor Dumbledore to be informed until it was too late. I don't think she was impressed by his announcement either. Then once she'd okayed it Madame Charlot flooed mum and dad to see if they were okay with it and since they wanted me to go to Hogwarts all along they were fine with it." She said all of this in practically one breath and the surrounding students looked completely boggled about what she'd just said but I caught all of it,

"This is amazing! It'll be so much better not having to write to you about everything that happening! You'll be there with me! Are you starting after Christmas?"

"Better! We're going back at the weekend. Professor McGonagall think it'll be better for me to settle in while teachers are winding down from the holidays, makes sense really." I nodded, it did made sense but at the same time it meant I would have to go back.

"I can't wait to see Dumbledore's face when we get there! He told everyone that he'd sent you away because you aren't safe and now there're two of us!" that was a pleasant prospect, definitely something to look forward to. "Oh, and she brought the sorting hat with her; said it would be better to get that out of the way now rather than waiting until the night I move in. I'm in Gryffindor, the hat told me that I was suited to Hufflepuff because of my loyalty to you but that it would be counterproductive to put me in a different house, so I'm a Gryffindor."

**Not too sure how I feel about this chapter either, I found it really difficult to get the France stuff.. couldn't really think of much they could do, so most of this has ended up being slightly irrelevant, there will be a little bit more at the beginning of the next chapter so maybe I'll think of something more interesting to put in that. **

**Sorry for the wait, and thank you to all who have reviewed or favourited the story, or added the alert thing. I'm glad that people are reading this and I hope you are all enjoying it. Criticism is always welcomed, since it's the only way the story will get better **

**So 'til next time.. enjoy. **


	14. Chapter 14

The rest of the week was filled with Taylor talking about how excited she was about finally getting to see Hogwarts, she didn't let me tell any of the girls in case it got back to Dumbledore before the weekend, she wanted to be there to see him put in his place, she had apparently also asked Professor McGonagall not to mention it to Joe so he would be surprised as well.

We were allowed to go out to Little Paris during the week, which gave Taylor a chance to show me around and talk about the times she'd been there before with her friends. I was so grateful for that break from Hogwarts talk. I didn't think I really felt ready to go back there yet but Taylor would be with me and I would still have all my friends. I was also hoping that Remus would have stopped avoiding me; this past week would have given him a pretty good break from having to see me. Another small part of me was just wishing that Lily was right about James trying to find who released the information in the article because as much as I was trying to deny it, even to myself, it felt good to think that he was in my corner again.

On the Thursday evening I got some more mail from Hogwarts, one letter was from Joe and the other from Lily. Susie wrote to me earlier in the week,

_Dearest Riley,_

_I'm missing you like mad; Gabby's gone off with Sirius, Remus is no-where to be found, Lily seems to be worried about something and incapable of holding a conversation, Potter is out for the blood of whoever drove you out of school, Dorcas is sulking about Sirius, and Alice is being a pain about Frank again. I need you to come please? I think I will likely go crazy if you stay away until Christmas! _

_The only person I've been able to have a proper conversation with is your brother and that's just weird since he's a professor. I need you! _

_Hope you're having a good time in France, come home soon though! _

_Love Susie xx_

I didn't bother replying to her, knowing that I was going to be seeing her in a few days. Lily's letter was something a bit more substantial,

_Dear Riley, _

_I'm glad you're having a good time with Taylor. Little Paris is beautiful isn't it! I managed to convince my parents to take me one year when we were on holiday in France, I loved it, shame Petunia didn't enjoy herself as much; she kept screaming and flinching every time she saw someone do any magic, we didn't get to stay for long. _

_As for what's happening at Hogwarts I don't really know what to tell you, it's like everyone has gone crazy or something. No one's speaking to anyone else; Dorcas is _still_ sulking, Alice is _still_ going on and on about Frank, Susie has been spending a lot of time with Professor Hunt; said she's been having trouble in transfiguration. Black told Remus what he said to me, thinking that Remus would be amused by it but Remus has said that he isn't going to speak to Black until he tells Potter what he did. Remus thinks it was Black who did it and apparently he did something last year that has made him believe that Black would be more than capable of something like that._

_There's a Hogsmeade visit this weekend, and Gabby just announced that she's agreed to go with Black, I'm certain that it won't end well. But it did kind of bring everyone together; gossip will do that I suppose! Well Dorcas stormed off but Alice and Susie seemed to forget about their fight for a little while. _

_I think it would be safe for you to come home now. I'm sure Potter will make sure there aren't any more pranks against you, well not relating to the vampire thing, just the normal kind. _

_Hope you enjoy the rest of your visit._

_Lily xx_

I sighed at the continuing use of James' surname instead of his given name. Joe's letter just basically told me that I didn't have anything to worry about, that although he was less than impressed about what Dumbledore said he wasn't about to go and risk losing the only job he's likely to be able to get. It didn't say much else but it served its purpose of putting my mind at rest.

The last couple of days of my visit flew by without me even noticing and suddenly Taylor and I were in Madame Charlot's office preparing to floo back to Hogwarts. I was so nervous about going back that my hands were trembling, which was ridiculous; Hogwarts had been my home for the past six years and now I was dreading going back there. "I can't wait to meet all of your friends! I bet you're looking forward to seeing James!" I grimaced,

"I'm just hoping I can make it to Christmas without any more drama! I can't believe so much has happened already this year!" Taylor laughed at that,

"You're about to make your headmaster look like a fool in front of your whole school and you're hoping for no drama?" I had to admit she had a point there. Her words actually did help stop my nerves; that was one part of this I was definitely looking forward to, Dumbledore's face when he saw the two of us. We had discussed it at length earlier that day, Taylor had wanted to make it all dramatic and have me come in and sit down like everything was normal and greet my friends, and Dumbledore would stand up to announce that he had decided that it was safe for me to be around the rest of the students, and then just as he had finished his speech Tay would come in and join me at the Gryffindor table and then we would just sit and wait to hear how he would explain that.

We had decided not to do that though, we decided that we would just come into the Great Hall together and sit down like nothing was wrong and I would introduce her to my friends and then we would wait.

It was time to go and I had calmed down, I was ready to go back. I knew that nothing would have changed, that everyone would still treat me with caution and they would still whisper and probably still prank me or avoid me but it was going to be okay because if they weren't willing to accept me then they weren't worth the trouble. "Where are we flooing to?"

"Your Professor McGonagall said you could use 'er office, so zat Professor Dumbledore would not know you are zere until you enter ze Great Hall for dinner." Madame Charlot was grinning, turned out she didn't think too highly of what Dumbledore had said either and was looking forward to him being taken down a peg. Especially by one of her students.

I went first and threw the floo powder into the flames, taking a deep breath I shouted "Professor McGonagall's office, Hogwarts." And stepped in and started to spin back home. Taylor came through seconds after I'd stepped out of the way,

"Madame Charlot told me to tell you that she forgot to mention that Professor McGonagall isn't back yet, her daughter and the baby still aren't too well. So Joe should be-"

"Why didn't you two tell me about this little plan?" Joe was standing in the doorway grinning, and I couldn't help but grin back at him.

"We wanted it to be a surprise."

"But clearly McGonagall can't keep a secret." We both assumed our put out faces, which we had perfected at a young age, and Joe laughed at us and pulled us both into a hug.

"Well I'm glad you're both here. Does the Professor Dumbledore know?" we both shook our heads, I'm sure I looked a little bit guilty about this but Taylor was still smiling happily. "Well then this should be an interesting dinner. Come on, we're already late."

As we made our way down to the Great Hall Taylor was quietly muttering about how cold it was here, and how the Beauxbaton's Palace was a lot prettier. "Wait until you see the castle from the outside, then you'll change your mind. When we get the train back after Christmas, the view from the carriages really will take your breath away." Taylor looked pleased about this,

"Glad to see you're finally excited to be back." We'd made it to the Great Hall by this point and Joe turned to us with his hand on the door handle, and grinned again,

"Together?" Taylor and I looked at each other before we turned back and nodded, all three of us fought down our smiles and made our way into the hall. Joe went straight up to the Head Table while I looked up the Gryffindor table; my face made a slight frown when I noticed that Gabby was sitting next to Sirius and glaring, almost unblinkingly at Lily, but I made my way over to the rest of them anyway. When I was standing by Lily she turned round and jumped up to hug me,

"I'm so glad you're home!" when she was done with the trying to squeeze the breath out of me she noticed Taylor, "Oh, wow. I wasn't expecting that." The rest of the group turned to see what she was talking about and Susie leapt up from her seat and grabbed my arm across the table to pull me into an incredibly awkward hug, as we were separated by the table,

"Thank Merlin you're back! I missed you!" She pulled away and noticed Taylor in the same way Lily had, "Oh Merlin, you brought your sister with you?" this was shouted pretty loudly; loud enough, in fact, to draw the attention of the rest of the hall, and that's when people started to whisper.

But this time I relished in it, sure they were whispering because I was back and I'd brought some more of my vampire family to their school but why did it really matter what they were saying? I had my friends and now my family around me, they couldn't hurt me. Professor Dumbledore's attention had finally been attracted, and he moved to stand at the podium to make a speech.

"Good evening, settle down now, settle down. As you have all, no doubt, noticed Miss Riley Hunt has returned to the castle this evening. For the past week I have been in talks with the governors about whether or not it would be safe to bring her back to live in the school and it has been decided that Miss Hunt, like her brother, poses no threat to this school, its students or its staff so we have welcomed her back with open arms." Dumbledore smiled and returned to his seat,

"But Professor, who's the other girl?"

"In order to make things easier for their family at this hard time Miss Taylor Hunt has been invited to join her siblings here at Hogwarts until the end of term." Tay and I looked at each other and smirked as Joe leant over to say something to Dumbledore, "Misses Hunt if you could both please stay behind after dinner, I would very much like to hear about your trip and news from Beauxbatons." We both nodded, our smirks turning into something more acceptable… not letting it show that we had just made a small victory over the most powerful wizard of our time.

Taylor had wanted to stand up and tell him right there, for the whole school to hear that she was a student here now, but I managed to convince her- with some help from Joey- that it was enough to have the victory and that flaunting it in front of the whole school would be going a step too far… we didn't want to make an enemy out of the headmaster, that could make life very difficult for the both of us.

Taylor was introduced to all my friends, she was a little put off by Susie at first, but most people are and by the end of the meal she realised how much like her own friend, Monica, Susie is. Gabby didn't seem to be too impressed by the addition to the group at first and seemed eager to find out exactly when Tay would be leaving, but I think it was because she was used to being the centre of attention and that wasn't the case during that particular dinner. I figured, maybe 'hoped' is a better word, that Gabby would get over that and accept her into the group. Lily was fascinated with hearing about Beauxbatons, wanting to hear about the building, the history of the school, the classes, the teachers, and the culture surrounding them. It was almost like an interview or interrogation but Tay found it amusing that someone could be so interested in hearing about a school and happily answered all the questions that lily threw at her.

After Lily's letters I had expected James to actually speak to me, I caught myself thinking about it; wishing that he would just say something to me, but then I remembered about my revelation from France and stopped myself from going down that road of thought again. Remus stayed unusually quiet but did pipe in the occasional question, when he thought that Lily had missed something interesting. Black's only input into the conversation was to wink and ask whether Tay had a boyfriend, which was answered with a snort and a bit of a sneering 'yes' from Tay, a glare from me and a smack round the back of the head from Gabby. After that they started their own little conversation but I did notice Gabby occasionally sneaking looks of contempt at both Tay and Lily, but I wasn't sure what the problem was between her and Lily.

Dinner certainly was interesting, my friends had been distracted by the presence of my sister so I got to sit back and just listen as they questioned her about what life was like at Beauxbaton's. I spent a lot of my time looking around the hall, there were a lot of people still glancing over at us and whispering; it must have been a slow week while I was away. While I was looking around I noticed that Professor Dumbledore didn't have the usual twinkle in his eyes, he looked a little bit worried. Almost like he was trying to think of a way to explain this to the governors, surely they wouldn't be happy to have all three of us back again.

After dinner Taylor and I made our way up to the Headmaster's study, we met Joey along the way, "Professor Dumbledore asked me to join you. I don't think he was too pleased by the surprise." Taylor grinned,

"Well good. I can't wait to see how he talks his way out of it with the governors." I nodded, agreeing with her but at the same time I was so nervous. It was just starting to sink in what we were doing to the headmaster, we were making a fool of him in his own school and it suddenly occurred to me that it possibly wasn't the best of ideas. "Lee, we only have just over six months left here anyway, what can he really do to us?" I shrugged, because I wasn't really sure; it wasn't really something I had thought about until we were waiting next to the gargoyle,

"Did he not tell you the password Joey?" Joey nodded,

"He did, I'm just waiting to see what you want to do before we go in."

"Let's just do it, Tay's right; there isn't much he can do about it at this point."

The headmaster was sitting behind his desk when we got into his study, he didn't look happy to see us. He motioned for us all to sit down in the chairs in front of his desk, there were only two so Taylor had to conjure her own, something which Professor Dumbledore was very impressed with, "That's a very advance piece of magic Miss Hunt. However, as advanced as you are and as good a student as you are; good enough to be trusted to miss two weeks of your schooling to spend time with family, I must say it wasn't exactly a pleasant surprise to see you here." Taylor and I exchanged a glance and Joe inclined his head to tell us to start our explanation,

"Well you see Sir, the kids at Beauxbatons are a lot more open-minded about situations like ours. They understand that we aren't dangerous and that we won't be hunting for their blood any time soon, so we discussed it and decided that it would be better for us to be here so that it can be dealt with."

"I had the break from the stares and the whispering that I needed and I've realised that running away to France probably did more harm than good because it took away any doubt anyone had about the story being true." Joe opened his mouth but I beat him to it, "I know you told me that Joey but I needed to get away. But I'm ready to be back here now, especially with Tay here." Professor Dumbledore smiled,

"Yes it is always good to have family around us at times like these and I will be happy to continue to allow you to have time out of classes until after Christmas when Taylor goes home." Joe frowned but didn't say anything while Taylor and I looked at each other with confusion written across both of our faces,

"Sir?"

"I told you before you left for France, Miss Hunt, that I felt you could be trusted to continue with your studies out of lessons. I will allow that to continue for the duration of your sister's visit."

"But Professor, Taylor isn't going home after Christmas; Professor McGonagall said that she would write to you when we spoke to her on Wednesday." The headmaster frowned and the regrowing twinkle was snuffed out again, a slight anger took its place,

"Regarding what Miss Hunt?" His ton was one that I didn't want to mess with, luckily Taylor and Joe seemed to pick up on my reluctance to speak up again and took over for me,

"Regarding my transfer to Hogwarts, Professor." Professor Dumbledore's eyes widened with shock, even I was surprised at the coldness in her voice; it wasn't something I'd experienced before. I made note not to make her angry again, I don't think I'd last very long against that voice.

The old wizard regained his composure and smiled in what should have been a placating manor but it was too late for that, "I'm afraid we don't accept transfers, especially not in the middle of the year during the N.E.W.T years. It just can't be done, here at Hogwarts we believe that you should finish your schooling wherever it was started." All three of us smirked at that, Professor McGonagall had mentioned that but she had decided that in our circumstances exceptions could be made.

"Actually Professor, Professor McGonagall's letter wasn't a request for Tay to be transferred it was to notify you that it had already been done, our parents signed off on it already."

"As did Madame Charlot and Professor McGonagall. She also took the liberty of sorting me, so that we wouldn't have to go through all of that just now." The headmaster now seemed to incapable of speech, we just kept sitting smirking at him,

"Minerva said she had the paperwork on your desk first thing Thursday morning at the latest, so it should be here somewhere. She also asked me to inform you that the records have already been updated, although I'm not sure why she wanted me to tell you that in particular but she was very clear about wanting you to hear that." Of course all four of us knew exactly why she had told him to say that; so that it couldn't be undone by the headmaster.

We all sat there in silence for a few minutes, Professor Dumbledore had found the paperwork that Professor McGonagall had sent over and it seemed to be that it was all in order, "If that's all Professor, I believe my sister's friends are waiting to continue their line of questioning in the Gryffindor common room. Goodnight Sir." The headmaster nodded slowly and suddenly looked a lot older than he had when we first arrived, I felt bad about it for most of the walk back to the common room.

Back in the common room there was a crowd forming a circle in one corner of the room, we elbowed our way into the middle to see what was happening. Susie caught my arm to stop me from going further into the middle when I saw that it was Gabby and Lily who were standing at either side of the circle screaming at each other.

_AN: Got another one for you guys I think I'm happy with this one, but I'm also extremely sleep deprived and stressed with exam prep so it might actually be rubbish and I'm just not seeing it anymore, in my lessened mental state. Thank you all so much for all your reviews, they really do make my day when I get them. As usual suggestion and criticisms are more than welcome I hope you're still enjoying the story and come back for more with the next update._


	15. Chapter 15

I glanced back at Susie thinking that maybe she knew what they were shouting about but she looked just as baffled as I felt and she just shrugged and shook her head as I went to move forwards again. It was impossible to tell what they were shouting because neither was letting the other get a word in, it would have been a whole lot easier to help resolve the problem if anyone was able to make out what the problem actually was. I turned back to Susie again, "Does anyone know what's going on?" Susie shook her head,

"Lily was sitting helping Peter with some charms homework and Gabby went over to them and asked if she could speak to Lily, after a few minutes the yelling started. I don't know what they were talking about before and I have no idea what they're shouting about now- they've been going like that since they started about ten minutes ago."

"Okay, well someone needs to stop them, and no one else seems to be doing anything about it. I'm going in." Susie opened her mouth to argue but I was already gone.

I managed to push my way back to the middle of the crowd, Gabby and Lily were near the tables by the window and Peter was still sitting at his and Lily's table looking more tense than usual. By that point Gabby was right up in Lily's face and I had to pull her away from Lily so I could get them to talk about it like normal people. I grabbed one of each of their hands and pulled them towards the staircase to the dorm, at least then it would be a more private discussion instead of the whole common room being there to witness it. I pushed them each onto their beds and stood in the middle of the room face them, "So, what's going on with you two?" they just glared at each other, neither one wanting to explain their behaviour; I turned to Gabby, "Susie said you wanted to talk to Lily about something?" Gabby nodded,

"I wanted to come up here and talk but she wouldn't leave Pettigrew in the middle of a tutoring session so we had to talk there." I nodded and motioned for her to keep going but she got a strange look on her face and didn't seem to want to tell me anymore than that. I looked at Lily and she rolled her eyes,

"She came over to accuse me of being the one to tell the Prophet about you and your family." Just when I thought there was finally going to be some drama that didn't include me, my eyebrows shot up,

"What? Gabs why would you think that? Lily's my friend, there's no reason for her to do it."

"I don't know why she did it! But I do know that Sirius didn't and _she's _the only person he told after he found out. Which means that all the people who knew before the article were you, Professor Hunt, Sirius, the rest of the professors and _her_.-"

"Remus knew as well." They looked at each other with their eyebrows up in their hairlines, "Well it wasn't him and _I _know that."

"How do you know for sure?" I looked over at Lily,

"Because I know something about him too, he wouldn't do it because he would be worried I'd tell his secret."

"What _is_ his secret?" I narrowed my eyes at Lily,

"Staying a secret."

"Well anyways, out of that list who do you really think would tell? Not you or Professor Hunt obviously, Professor Dumbledore is getting a heck of a lot of grief for this so not him and none of the other professors would bother; they all love you and Professor Hunt. I _know_ Sirius didn't do it and that only leaves her. So it was her, that's what I was shouting about. I just wanted her to tell me why she would do that to you and your family but she kept denying it so I got frustrated and angry." I raised an eyebrow at her logic,

"How do you know Sirius didn't do it? To be honest out of the people on that list he is the most likely person to have done it. He's hated me for six years so why not him?"

"I know it wasn't him because he told me and he really seems to want you to know that and he's been trying to find out who it was so that he can clear his name and James will speak to him again. Do you really think that he would risk his friendship with James for a stupid prank?"

"If he wasn't willing to then why did he tell Lily anyway? What was he hoping would happen because I really doubt he was just going to tell her for her own good or whatever?"

"Okay so he was hoping that Lily would still dislike you enough to tell people but he only planned for the kids here to find out, he didn't want the whole wizarding world to turn against you!" I rolled my eyes at that, as if he didn't think that by the whole school finding out the rest of the world wouldn't as well.

"Well I don't believe that it was Lily and like you said, those are the only people who knew so my bet is still on Sirius. Can we all be friends again now?" Gabby shook her head,

"It wasn't Sirius." With that she left the room,

"I promise you Riley, it wasn't me!" I just nodded; I didn't have anything more to say about it and I was thinking over what Gabby had said. No matter how great Sirius' dislike for me was he would never risk James' friendship over something like this.

Lily and I sat in silence for a few minutes before she looked at her watch and told me she had patrol with James in a couple of minutes, she made a face at the mention of James and the thought of having to spend more time with him and it was all I could do not to start shouting at her as Gabby had; she really could be incredibly infuriating at times!

I sat on my bed in the now empty and quiet room, flicking through a book from the pile on my bedside cabinet, and thinking about what Gabby had said. "Lily and I were really bad terms for the past four years but we'd fixed things by the time the article came out, and Black said _something_ to her the day before it was printed. But we were friends again by then. Would she really do something like that to me? But she was so angry about whatever he told her, and she was so shocked when she read the paper… she didn't even believe it was true until she saw me, and she was apologising." That train of thought made me frown, "What did she have to apologize about?" I looked down at the book in my hands and put it back on the pile, "No, it wasn't her." I hadn't really been aware that I was musing aloud until a voice, remarkable like my own, responded,

"But if it wasn't her then who was it?" my head shot up and I met Taylor's eyes and shrugged,

"I really don't know. If I did then my friends wouldn't all be accusing each other. The marauders would still be friends, Remus would still trust everyone and believe that _his_ secret is still safe, Gabby wouldn't be yelling at people … well actually she probably would, but I wouldn't feel like I was to blame for it." She didn't say anything, she was good like that; she always knew when to stay quiet and just let people vent, "And d'you know something else? I bet James and Lily would be together already if this stupid article hadn't come out, it would have made things a lot easier for me in my quest to get them together!" Taylor just turned to me and raised an eyebrow,

"Have you actually done anything towards this completing this quest of yours? Or have you just been leaving them to it?" I looked down at my hands, knowing I had a guilty look on my face and trying to hide it as best as I could, but she just laughed,

"I've had other things on my mind! Not to mention I've been in a different country to them for the last week!" she just kept laughing so I gave up pouting and pleading my case and just threw her slipper at her; somehow it had managed to find its way into my trunk,

"Ah, thank you! I was looking for that!" she turned around and grinned and I couldn't stop the smile growing on my own face, it was so good to have her there,

"I know you were. So, how do you like Hogwarts so far?" Taylor frowned,

"It's certainly a lot louder than Beauxbatons, but I suppose that's because you're always around the same people; the ones you share a dorm with are the ones you're in classes with and the ones you eat with and the ones you spend all of your free time with. I guess that's one thing I'll miss about Beauxbatons, I had my own room and the houses weren't quite so rigid in their socialising. But I think I'm going to like it here." I smiled as I fell down into my bed, suddenly exhausted.

It couldn't have taken me long to fall asleep because I was woken up to the sounds of Lily and Gabby whisper-shouting at each other, I didn't want to have to deal with them though so I just rolled over and buried myself in my pillows and didn't emerge until I had heard the door slam twice, "This is definitely going to take some getting used to!" I chuckled at the grumble from Taylor's bed,

"Come on, it's your first proper day of Hogwarts life so you cannot miss breakfast!" she perked up at the mention of food and we were both ready in record time,

"What about Susie? Aren't you going to wake her?"

"I'm not sure when she went to sleep so I'm not going to be the one to risk waking her up before her nine hours are up! But you feel free!" She looked back at the sleeping girl and quickly shook her head and followed me out of the room.

We made it to the Great Hall, it was still pretty early but we would be the last of our friends to arrive. Breakfast wasn't something I was looking forward to that morning, after the revelations of the night before I was willing to put money on the fact that it was going to be incredibly awkward in there. The only problem with that idea was that no one would have been willing to bet against me.

Just as I was about to step through the doors someone grabbed my arm and spun me around to face them, I just sighed; it didn't take three guesses to work out who was going to be in front of me. "Riley?" I turned to Taylor who was a few paces further into the hall, and closer to the food, than I was she was waiting to see if I was going to follow or need her to deal with Black, I shook my head,

"You go on and eat Tay. I'm hoping this isn't going to take long." She nodded and made her way over to where the rest of the group were sitting, taking a seat next to Remus.

I turned back to Black with a raised eyebrow, "So?" he let out an annoyed sigh and ran a hand through his hair, I rolled my eyes at him; he had no right to be standing there acting all irritated, he was the one getting between me and my food _again_. He sighed again, in a somewhat resigned kind of way,

"I need you to tell James that this isn't my fault."

"Really? I was under the impression that it was you who stopped me from eating again this morning, how is that not your fault?" for some reason I couldn't just acknowledge that I knew what he was talking about, he'd been treating me like the enemy for too long for him to suddenly expect me to do anything for him. His eyes narrowed and a smug smile wouldn't have crossed my face if I didn't have such good control of my features,

"You know what I'm talking about Hunt."

"If this isn't what you're talking about then I'm afraid I don't." I'm pretty sure he actually growled at that point but it was hard to be sure that it wasn't just my imagination,

"The article and everything else, Hunt. You need to tell James it isn't my fault, I didn't do it." My mouth actually dropped open in surprise that he would even ask me to do that, after everything he'd done. When he stopped me I had a good idea of what he wanted to talk to me about, but for him to actually ask me to assure James that it wasn't him, it was just too much.

"Why in Merlin's good name would I do that?"

"Because it's the truth, why would I do that? I have nothing against your family or vampires in general."

"So it's just me you have a problem with?" He nodded and I levelled a glare at him,

"Wait, no that's not what I meant, I just meant that I don't have any reason to cause all these problems for your family and I may not be the brightest of people but even I would realise the issues that something like this would create for all of you."

"Why should I believe you? Even your three best friends think you did it, if even they don't believe you're innocent of this then why would I? Peter, James and Remus know you better than anyone. You may have convinced Gabby that you had nothing to do with all of this but I'm not buying it." Suddenly I wasn't so hungry anymore so I walked past him and out onto the grounds, it was beautiful at that time of year, the trees were bare but we hadn't had the first snow yet; everything was coated in frost and glittering in the weak sunshine.

I went over to the lake and sat on the big rocks where we'd made a habit of relaxing after the end of year exams every summer. The lake had a thin cover of ice across its surface, it wasn't thick enough for skating yet but it soon would be. I quickly got lost amongst my thoughts again, it was something that was happening to me a lot, and it seemed to happen a lot more easily with every week that passed. There always seemed to be some new piece of drama for me to think about.

Another thing I love about that time of year is that it makes it very difficult for even the most silent of movers to sneak up on you, especially with my extra sensitive hearing. After around half an hour I heard footsteps approaching and assumed it was one of my friends or Taylor or Joe coming to find out what Black had wanted and why I wasn't having breakfast, but as they got closer I realised that it wasn't a scent I recognised.

I was quickly on my feet, my wand just up my sleeve ready to slip into my hand should I need it. I was most surprised to find Severus Snape hovering about ten feet away from me, he'd been doing that a lot since the article; whenever I stayed to talk to Joe after Transfiguration Snape would lurk around the doorway until either one of us noticed him there and then he would scurry off before we could say anything to him. "I've wanted to apologise to you Hunt." My eyes narrowed suspiciously, "What's happening to you isn't fair, it isn't you or your family's fault that you are what you are. It isn't right that you're all being punished for it when you haven't done anything wrong."

"Why would you want to apologise for that? It isn't your fault either Snape." My head snapped up towards the castle, someone else was coming; Snape noticed my reaction to the scent and his expression morphed from slightly sad and what could only be described as regretful into his usual sneer and his wand came out of nowhere, mine was instantly in my hand as well,

"You're getting everything you deserve Hunt; I cannot believe that thought that it was a fine idea to let you back here. You and your undead brother and sister!" he sent a hex at me but it was slow and easy to dodge. He was one of the best duellers in the year, if not the school, if he'd been trying to hex me it wouldn't have been so easy to avoid. He caught sight of his friends, Avery and Mulciber and stormed off towards them, when he reached them they clapped him on the back and lead him back to the castle.

If I hadn't been confused after speaking with Lily and Gabby then the events of the morning definitely did it.

**AN: Sorry for the wait, this chapter gave me more trouble than I anticipated even though not a whole lot happens. In my mind it's a crucial chapter but to the rest of you it's really just filler.**

**Thanks for sticking with it, the reviews I've had really mean a lot to me, and just so you know I always respond to all the reviews I get so if you ever have any questions or have noticed any massive errors or anything feel free to point them out. **

**Hollie. **


	16. Chapter 16

I had been hoping that I would be able to figure it out by myself but it didn't take me long to realise that I would need someone to talk this through with, then my problem was figuring out who I would be able to discuss this with without any major repercussions. Taylor and Joe would both go after him looking for a confession, Lily wouldn't want to discuss Snape with me and things were still awkward between Remus and me, though ideally he is the one I would want to talk about this with.

It took me a couple of days of struggling to come up with a viable explanation for Snape's words before I accepted that I was just going to have to suck it up and talk to Remus in spite of how awkward it was sure to be.

Lily, Taylor and I were sitting at one of the tables near the fire in the common room working on our Defence Against the Dark Arts essays. Remus was sitting nearby working with Peter on the new spell we'd learnt that week in Charms, Peter couldn't seem to get the hang of it and was getting frustrated that the spell just wouldn't work for him. They'd been working on it for over an hour and he hadn't improved at all which was enough to wear on even Remus' patience, although he lasted a lot longer than any of the rest of us; we'd all been asked to tutor Peter in something at some point but only Remus and Lily could stand to stick with him until he actually understood.

After another ten minutes Remus sighed and suggested they call it a night and that they could try again with it in the morning before Charms class. Peter nodded and scuttled off out of the portrait hole, my eyebrow raised, "I wonder where Peter's going." Lily looked up from her textbook,

"Sorry? I wasn't paying attention." I shook my head,

"It's nothing, I was just wondering where Peter was off to at this time of night." She frowned and shrugged her shoulders,

"I dunno, maybe he's meeting someone. Maybe Black and Potter's influences are starting to wear off on him and he's gotten himself a date." Taylor glanced up at me to see how I was going to take this slight on James' character but I chose to ignore it and she went back to her essay,

"Yeah, maybe." I very much doubted that was the case but didn't dwell on it, "I'm done with this," I closed my book and Lily looked up again with a strange look on her face,

"How can you be? I'm barely half way through!" I smirked at her,

"Thanks for that Lils, but I'm actually rather good at DADA and did you notice the topic?" She glanced down at her parchment and coloured slightly,

"Oh, of course. Sorry." I chuckled at her,

"Don't worry about it; I'm not going to get upset that you managed to forget about it!" Taylor sighed and closer her book as well,

"It doesn't actually make it that much easier, we still have to look stuff up and research. We weren't born with innate knowledge about vampires." I smirked again,

"No, but we can read and write a heck of a lot faster. I think I'm going to go talk to Remus, d'you guys mind?" Lily groaned and shook her head before going back to her essay,

"If you find me asleep on my book will you levitate me up to the dorm? This is going to take me all night!" Taylor shook her head and smiled at Lily,

"I'll stay with Lily and make sure she doesn't pass out." I snickered as I packed my things away and caught Lily sending me a dark look, which only served to make me laugh more.

I felt eyes on me as I made my way over to where Remus was sitting, I looked up and caught James' eye but only held my gaze for a second before he looked away, but he didn't glare so that was something and it made me feel a little better. He still had yet to speak to me again but at least he wasn't glaring at me every time he saw me anymore.

"Hey Remus, d'you mind if I join you?" He looked up and seemed surprised to find me standing next to his table,

"Oh. No of course not, sit down. I was just going to get started on the potions essay for tomorrow." I smacked myself on the forehead,

"I completely forgot about that! Just when I thought I was done for the night too." I sat down and got my potions textbook and unfinished essay out of my bag and started to work on it, we weren't speaking but it wasn't an awkward silence so we both just sat and got on with our homework; we could talk afterwards.

Or at least that was my plan when I sat down but I soon got tired of potions and started to fidget, "Something bothering you Riley?"

"No, why would there be?"

"I don't know, maybe because you can't seem to sit still." I blushed a little,

"Sorry about that. I guess I wanted to talk to you; we haven't spoken at all since I got back and I just wanted to make sure things weren't weird between us." I groaned at the look on his face; it was going to be weird and I didn't have a clue how to fix it. "I want things to be okay with us, I want to be able to talk to you about stuff again." Remus nodded,

"Look, I don't want things to be strange between us either so how about we forget it ever happened. I should never have asked you out like that, it was for the wrong reasons and you were right to turn me down." I cringed at his wording,

"Sorry about that." He smiled at me, it didn't look forced so I took that for a good thing.

"It's okay, I'm over it." He winked at me and I gasped in a mock-offended way,

"You could at least have left me with the image of you pining over me while I was away in France."

"Who's to say there wasn't any pining?" I couldn't tell from the look on his face whether or not he was being serious or not so I wasn't sure how to respond so I just turned back to my essay and pretended to be working. Judging from the chuckles I got in response he was kidding and I looked back at him and stuck my tongue out at him and dramatically bent over my textbook.

After about ten minutes I was tired of it again, I hadn't gotten very much done and was glad to have the morning free to work on it. "Remus can I talk to you about something?" He held up a finger to ask me to give him a minute to finish his sentence,

"Sure, what is it?" I told him about my conversations with Black and Snape and told him that I had no idea what to make of either of them; he sat quietly and nodded in all the appropriate places. When I was done he continued nodding and looked like he was deep in thought about something,

"Well the only explanation I can think of for Sirius saying all of that is that he really didn't do it, he'd never go to _you_ and ask for help unless there was no other way, unless he was feeling really desperate." It was my turn to nod,

"But does that necessarily mean that he didn't do it? I mean asking me for help could just be a last resort to get everyone to believe him but it doesn't mean that he's telling the truth." Remus shrugged,

"I get the feeling that he was telling the truth, even he would have gotten tired of the lying by now; it's been weeks and usually by this point he would've 'fessed up and started on something else. The fact that he's trying so hard to clear his name makes me think that maybe he is telling the truth this time."

"Wasn't it something that Black said to you that made you think it was him in the first place though?" Remus nodded again,

"Well yeah but all he said to me was that he told Lily; he never actually said that he went to the _Prophet_, even then he said that Lily must have taken it further than he ever expected she would." I looked over to where Lily was still sitting with Taylor, they were chatting over Lily's essay. Lily glanced up and caught my eye and smiled, I smiled back at her and looked back at Remus, not at all sure what to think anymore.

"Okay, thinking about Black is making my head hurt. What about what Snape said?" Remus shook his head this time,

"While I can sometimes, occasionally understand some of what Sirius says and does, I have absolutely no understanding of how Severus Snape works. It sounds like he was feeling guilty about something but then why would he? There's no way he knew about you, is there?" I shook my head,

"I only ever spoke about it with you and there's no way he could have heard us because we were in the common room at the time. I guess he could have just been feeling bad about how we've been treated because of it, but that doesn't make sense coming from him. All of his lot hate us just on the basis that we're Gryffindors."

"Which explains why he suddenly changed his tune when his pals turned up but why was he being like that in the first place?" I shrugged; we were getting no-where with trying to figure Snape out, but it felt better to have someone else trying to work it out as well.

"But even when he sent that hex at me it was too easy to dodge; like he wasn't even trying to actually get me. You've seen how he duels in DADA, his spells are some of the fastest I've seen; some of them even give me trouble with my super-speed." Remus just shrugged again,

"I guess none of us really understand Severus Snape as well as we thought we did." I nodded,

"Amen to that." Remus laughed and went back to his essay but I pushed my things back into my bag, "I think I'm going to go to bed, I'll finish this in the morning when I can concentrate." Remus looked up and smiled with a knowing look on his face,

"Are you actually going to go to sleep or are you going to go upstairs and dwell on what Snape and Sirius could possibly have meant?"

"Probably the second one." I turned to leave to the sound of his laugh, but only made it a couple of steps before something popped into my head,

"Where did Peter go earlier?" Remus looked up with a frown,

"What d'you mean? When did he go anywhere?"

"After you were done helping him with the spell from Charms? He went out of the portrait hole, I was just wondering if you knew where he went. I don't think I've ever seen him leave so close to curfew without you or one of the other boys." Remus' frown deepened,

"I didn't even realise he'd left, I just assumed he was sitting with James," he turned round to where James was sitting and shook his head when he saw that Peter wasn't there, "I don't know, I guess I'll ask him when he gets back. I'm pretty sure he never mentioned anything. I'd remember something like that." I nodded and turned away again, this time I actually made it to the dorm and my bed. Remus had, of course, been right in his guess; I sat on my bed trying to figure out the motives behind what Snape said and whether Black had been being truthful with me for the first time since I met him.

I spent so much time pondering the conversations that I overslept the next morning, I had just finished my essay at the start of my first lesson of the day, which just so happened to be Potions. The essay was done but it wasn't my best work by far.

I was grateful for the break at lunchtime; potions hadn't gone well, if Remus hadn't been there to stop me there is a very high chance I would have blown up the potion. I sighed happily as I dropped my head onto the table in front of me, I heard someone laughing across the table from me but didn't have the energy to even look up to see who it was. I felt something nudging at my arm and reluctantly raised my head to see what it was; James was sitting across the table from me with a smile on his face pushing a plate of cottage pie towards me. I'd arrived in the hall with Susie and Gabby but they'd already fallen into a conversation with Black and Remus, I wasn't sure what to say to James so I just picked up my fork and started eating. He seemed pleased with that as he did the same.

We both included ourselves in the conversation happening around us, they had been discussing the upcoming Hogsmeade visit, "What're you doing for Hogsmeade Riley?" I frowned, I hadn't really thought about it, I knew that Gabby was going with Black again and Susie was meeting up with Frank for the day, it was a full moon the night before the visit so Remus wouldn't be going. It didn't look like I had many options; Taylor had a mysterious date, which she was being extremely secretive about and it had been driving me slowly mad since she announced it at the start of the conversation. Lily had just joined us and sat in her seat with an aggravated huff,

"I don't know, I guess I'll just stay at the castle. Maybe go see what Joe's up to." Lily forgot whatever she was about to start ranting about,

"It's the last Hogsmeade visit before Christmas! You can't spend it alone in the castle, and it just so happens that I don't have any plans either," She glanced up at James when she said this but quickly carried on, "We can go together, I still need to find something for Petunia that could pass for something from a muggle shop." There was a collective eye roll at that, we'd all heard plenty about the gifts that Lily had given her sister in the past and none of them had ever gone down well. I smiled and nodded, agreeing that I'd go and help her shop.

"How about you Potter, what've you got planned?" The rest of the group fell silent, waiting to see how he would react to being addressed by me,

"I have a date with Sophie Clark." No one said anything, there was just silence, "You know, the Ravenclaw?" I nodded but still couldn't make my mouth say anything. I chanced a glance up over at Lily, she didn't look happy about this development.

We were all saved by having to say anything when an owl swooped into the hall, as the rest of the school noticed its presence the rest of the hall started to fall quiet as well. We all knew what was happening out of the school walls that kept us so well protected and an owl coming at lunchtime was never one that was bearing good news. Everyone watched its progress as it made its way to the recipient of its letter, you could almost hear the relief as it passed over the Hufflepuff and Slytherin tables; they were safe from whatever this was. It flew over our heads and dropped a letter in Susie's lap; she picked it up with shaking hands and looked up at us all.

Gabby, Susie and I rose out of our seats as one and headed out of the Hall so Susie could open her letter without the whole school watching for her reaction. It made me realise just how lucky we had all been so far; none of us had lost anyone to this war, it seemed it was just a matter of time until we were more personally affected by everything that was going on. Even so, my heart broke at the look on Susie's face as she stared at the unopened letter in her lap, we were sitting on her bed in the dorm but she couldn't bring herself to open it.

We sat for about ten minutes before Gabby said "Suze, you need to open it. It might not be as bad as you're thinking." Susie looked up with a look that was clearly calling Gabby an idiot,

"What else could it be though?" I shrugged,

"I guess you'll have to open it to find out." She glared from Gabby back to me and sighed; she picked it up and opened it in one movement. We both watched her eyes scan across the parchment, both of us holding our breath, waiting to see how she reacted. She sprang up off the bed and ran to the bathroom where we heard her start to sob.


	17. Chapter 17

"Susie, please come out and talk to us. This could have been so much worse!" I elbowed Gabby in the ribs, while it was true the news in Susie's letter wasn't as bad as what we'd been expecting when the owl had appeared at lunch, but that didn't mean that Susie needed to hear that. "What? I thought it was going to tell us her parents had been killed, _this_ isn't that bad!" She may have believed that but she did have the sense to hiss it into my ear rather than saying it loud enough for Susie to hear her through the door.

The door unlocked and I shot a look at Gabby, telling her to behave, before stepping into the bathroom. "He broke up with me Riley." I couldn't stand the look on her face, she was just so sad. "And he didn't even have the bloody courage to wait until the weekend and do it to my face!"

"Well at least she isn't sad anymore." I glared at Gabby again; even if I had been thinking exactly the same thing at least I had the sense not to say it out loud, but Susie didn't seem to hear her anyway.

"I cannot believe him! If he's done this for Alice bloody Yates she will not know what hit her." I had a feeling that what would be hitting her was every hex Susie knew, which was a fair few. She made it to the door of the dorm, presumably to go and find Alice, before we realised what was happening,

"Susie! You can't just go and accuse her of stealing Frank from you. You don't know what his reason was, just because she fancies him it doesn't mean he chose her! Calm down for a second." Gabby had managed to get around to the other side of Susie and put herself between the crying girl and the door; I couldn't help but think it was a dangerous place for her to be.

"What other reason could there be?" Gabby and I exchanged another look, neither one of us wanted to suggest anything that would make her more upset. In a strange way we seemed to be in luck that day because we were saved from having to say anything by a knock on the door,

"Yes?"

"Er, I'm looking for Riley Hunt, Gabriella Philips and Susanna Samuels. Professor Hunt is in the common room and wants to see them." Gabby opened the door to reveal a third year who was looking a little nervous about being sent looking for us; she'd obviously seen what happened in the Great Hall.

"Yeah, that's us. Can you tell Professor Hunt to give us a minute?" The girl nodded and hurried off to relate my message to Joe, "Are you alright to go down and speak to Joe?"

"You made her sad again Riles!"

"Shut up Gabs, she's been sad the whole time, and besides would you rather deal with her when she's trying to take Alice's head off?" I knew what her answer was going to be before she even opened her mouth, but this time she got the message I was trying to convey to her and didn't say anything.

"Riley can you go talk to him for me? I don't want to have to face everyone; they're all going to think I'm so stupid. Gabs was right, that letter could have been so much worse." Gabby gave me one of her 'I told you so' looks but I chose to ignore her and went down to explain to Joe.

Down in the common room James and Lily were standing in front of pretty much the whole house with murderous looks on their faces while Remus and Black seemed to be standing guard at the bottom of the girls' staircase, "Well that would explain why that girl looked so nervous…" I noticed the side of Remus mouth quirk a little when he heard what I'd muttered.

When I reached Joe he looked anxious; none of the professors knew what had been in the letter. That should have tipped us off; usually Dumbledore would be aware of who'd been lost in the disappearances and attacks, you could see it in his eyes when the owls came in. "Can we go somewhere else to talk? Susie doesn't really want the whole house hearing." Joe nodded and followed me until we came to an empty classroom.

Joe silenced the room in case anyone managed to slip out of the common room unnoticed by Lily or James. "So, what did the letter say?"

"It was nothing like that, everyone's fine. Frank, her boyfriend, broke up with her. He just chose a very inopportune moment to send his owl, you know what getting an owl at lunch or dinner usually means so she panicked and feared the worst. Now she's just embarrassed that everyone's going to think that she over reacted."

"Everyone should understand, you heard how relieved everyone was when that owl flew over them. They were just as scared as she was, and anyway she doesn't need to tell anyone. No one else has advertised it when one of their loved ones has gone missing or been attacked, so why should they expect her to be any different?" I shrugged,

"I guess, but I think she'll take a bit more convincing than that." He nodded and turned to leave, "But wait, why did Dumbledore send you and not come himself? Usually he would come with McGonagall, even if it was to tell someone bad news." Joe nodded again,

"He said he thought she would be more comfortable talking to me about it since I'm your brother and you're her best friend. He also thought that, under the circumstances, it would probably be best if he didn't come; he didn't think you'd appreciate his presence." I snorted and rolled my eyes,

"He shouldn't have been worried about me appreciating his presence; he should have been worried about what Susie was going through." He walked me back to the common room but didn't come in this time, "I'll see you in Transfiguration tomorrow." He nodded and waved and I climbed through the portrait hole.

Everyone was still sitting quietly under the watchful eyes of the marauders and Lily; I couldn't help but smile, "Its fine, you can let them loose now." Lily nodded and stepped away from the group, James and Remus came over to join us as almost every girl from fourth year and under scurried up the steps; probably to see if they could hear anything from our dorm, "Good luck getting through Gabby's silencing charm, nothing else ever has!" a few of the stragglers groaned and turned around and traipsed back down the stairs, sitting and pulling homework out of their bags. "Don't they have classes?" James shook his head,

"Dumbledore gave everyone an extra half an hour; he thought Susie would want to have her friends around her." I raised an eyebrow, not understanding the logic,

"So he thought that if someone had been attacked or had disappeared she would want to be surrounded by the whole house to make her feel better?" James nodded and Remus scowled a little bit, "That makes no sense." Lily and Remus nodded in agreement but James frowned,

"Dumbledore probably thought that she would want you and Gabby and possibly Lily, Remus, Sirius and I but he couldn't just let the seven of us out of lesson. It wouldn't have been fair to the rest of the school."

"You said _if_ someone had disappeared? Does that mean that her family are all okay?" I nodded; I'd completely forgotten that none of them, except maybe Remus, knew what had happened.

"Yeah, the letter was from Frank. He decided that this lunchtime would be the perfect time to break up with her."

"Thank Merlin!"

"Don't let her hear you so happy about it, she's miserable and just about ready to rip Alice' head off." All I got were blank looks, I sighed and elaborated, "She thinks that Frank finally gave in to Alice's letters and broke up with her to be with Alice, so with that train of thought she wants to kill Alice so you may want to stop her from going up the stairs right now." Lily spun around towards the staircase and practically flew over to where the girl was just starting to climb. Alice paled and shook her head at whatever Lily had told her,

"Alice said that since she and Susie made up after their last argument about Frank she hasn't written a word to him and hasn't heard anything from him either, I guess it must have been something else."

"Great, another mystery." No one heard me apart from Remus who grinned at me, drawing some suspicious looks from Lily and James but this was something the two of us has grown used to over the years of being able to have whole conversations that the others around us couldn't hear.

I was surprised when I got back to the dormitory to find Gabby and Susie sitting in the middle of the floor in their pyjamas giggling, "You two are aware that we have to be in Defence Against the Dark Arts in about fifteen minutes? Now isn't really the best time for a sleepover." Gabby rolled her eyes,

"Being in pyjamas and eating chocolates and ice cream is how you get over a boyfriend, and it'll only take us five minutes max to get back into our uniforms. Join us." I couldn't help but reach for the chocolate that Susie was holding out to me,

"I'm not getting changed though, there's no point" Gabby started to argue but I cut her off, "I will, however, spend the whole weekend in my pyjamas with you if that's what you want Susie." Susie grinned at me and shoved a chocolate into her mouth, I had to hand it to her; she was taking this break up really well. I'd been expecting to come back to find her still sobbing and trying to get to Alice.

We were ten minutes late to Defence; Gabby took a bit longer than she claimed she would to get back into her uniform. We had to spend the period making notes on the Patronus charm which we would be trying in the next lesson. The rest of the day was rather boring in comparison to the drama at lunchtime. We spent a lot of time telling what seemed like every other person in the school that what was in Susie's letter was none of their business and if she wanted to tell them then she would, but there was no point in them asking questions because she wasn't going to answer them.

I sighed and pulled my unfinished star chart towards me, I'd been sitting talking about the upcoming holidays with Taylor when it had suddenly occurred to me that there were only two hours left until Astronomy and I had yet to finish the homework, with everything that had happened during the day it had completely slipped my mind. I'd moved away from the comfy chairs next to the fire in favour of a table practically hidden under the staircase to the girls' dorms, the plan had been that I would be away from the distractions that the common room provided and I would be concealed well enough that no one would bother me… my plan was failing.

James and Lily had chosen a table only a few feet away from mine to sit and discuss their ideas for activities to run throughout the Christmas holidays, for those who had opted to stay at the castle. I knew that was what they were discussing but it didn't stop me from getting a pretty strong urge to throw something at lily every time she laughed at one of James' sillier suggestions, which I knew he was only making in order to amuse her. It became clear to me that in spite of all my talk and promises to Taylor of getting over my feelings for him and trying to help him to win Lily over it just wasn't happening; twice in the twenty minutes they'd been sitting there I'd come very close to snapping my quill and launching my astronomy book at them.

"Everything okay Riley?" I jumped at the sound of a voice so close to me, "Wow, I don't think I've ever seen someone make you jump before, I'm actually quite proud of myself." He had a grin on his face as he finished teasing me and I fought my instinctual response to stick my tongue out at him, and just smiled a little sheepishly at him,

"I'm fine thanks Remus, why'd you ask?" he chuckled and I assumed it was at my expense, I was right.

"I've heard you growl at least twice in the last ten minutes. Is there anything in particular bothering you?" I sighed again,

"Nothing, I've just been sat here for half an hour trying to get this star chart finished but I can't seem to concentrate." I glared over at Lily before I could stop myself and as soon as I'd realised what I'd done I flicked my eyes back to Remus but it was too late; he'd noticed. He started to pile my things up, "What're you doing? I'm not done yet and I have to hand it in in just over an hour!" He didn't take any notice of me and picked up the pile of the table and pulled my bag out from under my chair, carefully sliding my work into it as he crossed the common room towards the portrait hole,

"Well come on then. You still have a star chart to finish!" He then jerked his head to indicate that he expected me to follow him; it wasn't until the portrait snapped shut behind him that I jumped out of my seat and followed.

I just caught sight of his robes disappearing around the corner when I got out into the corridor, this happened a couple more times before I got frustrated and gave up the chase, instead I stopped in the middle of the corridor and stomped my foot, "Remus John Lupin! If you expect me to follow you then the least you could do is wait for me!" I heard his laughter up ahead and his footsteps moving away from me. That's when it clicked; I knew what he was doing.

I let a grin creep up onto my face; I was the one who taught him this game when we'd started to trust each other more with our secrets. When my parents had noticed that Taylor and I were showing vampiric traits our mother started to teach us how to hone our abilities so that they could be of use to us in life, one of the ways she got us to work on it was a game like hide and seek but with the use of our hearing and other senses and abilities to make it harder for each other. Remus, being a werewolf had a lot of the same abilities so it made sense to me to play with him while I was at Hogwarts, away from my siblings.

I stayed in place in the middle of the corridor and took a breath and started to slow my breathing so that it was shallower and a lot quieter, as I was slowing my breathing my heartbeat started to slow as well. I closed my eyes, the easiest method of increasing my ability to hear and sure enough I could hear his shallow breathing up ahead; he knew how to make himself harder to detect as well but he was no match for my hearing, he was never able to make himself quiet enough.

He was actually doing a lot better than during most of our games; he'd evaded me for much longer than usual. It was a shame there was nothing I could do about my scent; that was his strongest sense, and I had no way of countering it but the fact that we were inside and there was no wind should be making this easier for me. As soon as that thought entered my head I realised what I could do, a simple charm to blow my scent away from him. Once I'd cast the charm I started to come a lot closer to him, he would only just get away in time before I could grab him.

I paused to listen around a corner, his heartbeat had sped up again and his footfalls were heavier than they should be during the game, I opened my eyes and stepped around the corner in time to see him running towards me. When he was level with me he hissed "Filch" at me before grabbing my arm and dragging me along behind him. He didn't let go of my arm until we had burst through the first door we came to, of course it just had to be a broom cupboard

We waited until we were positive that he'd moved on before we crept out of the cupboard, "Dammit Remus, we're going to be late! And you didn't let me finish my star chart!" We had five minutes to make it to the other side of the castle, and considering how uncooperative the staircases had become that year there was no way we'd make it on time.

"It's just Professor Johnson; she never gives detention, you'll just have to give it in next time." I nodded; he was right, there had been loads of time that James and Black had gotten away with not doing their astronomy homework and she never gave them more than a disapproving look.

That didn't mean I wasn't nervous when it got to the end of the lesson and the homework was being collected. Professor Johnson got to Black, "I'm sorry Professor, I didn't have time to do it this week, can I give it in next week." He said this with a small apologetic smile but Professor Johnson wasn't impressed,

"I don't know why you seem to think you can get away with not doing my homework Mr Black but this ends now, you will complete the homework in detention tomorrow evening." Black's mouth dropped open in shock, along with almost everyone else's in the class, I would have laughed if I hadn't been in the same boat he was. Remus turned in his seat in front of me,

"I'm really sorry Riley, I had no idea she would suddenly decide to give detentions today."

"I know; it's not your fault Remus. I should have remembered about it before I did. Besides, I've never missed homework for her before but Black does it all the time… Maybe it's just him?" I didn't even sound convincing to my own ears.

"Miss Hunt, where is your star chart?"

"Um, I actually haven't quite finished it Professor. Could I come and give it to you tomorrow?" Professor Johnson narrowed her eyes at me,

"I suppose that would be acceptable." Black let out an outraged noise,

"That's double standards Professor! Why should she be allowed to hand it in tomorrow when you wouldn't let me?" She turned to face him,

"But you are getting to hand it in tomorrow Black, at the end of your detention." Lily snorted, delighted by Black's outrage, and Black turned to glare at me. Remus leant over and whispered something to him and the both glanced at me before Black nodded and turned back to face the front of the room. Professor Johnson dismissed us and there was a slightly sluggish rush to the door; everyone just wanted to get to bed.

I walked back with Remus who was still apologising for not letting me finish my homework, "I didn't think she'd start giving out detentions tonight. She never has before; she's put up with Sirius not doing his homework since fifth year without a single detention!"

"Remus, stop! She didn't give me a detention, she just gave one to Sirius and I'm guessing it was probably because he hasn't done any homework since fifth year. I'm not angry at you." We walked in silence for a while after that, "What did you say to him at the end of class?"

"I just reminded him that trying to get you a detention on the last day of term wouldn't get you on his side with the James thing." I nodded, I hadn't even thought that. "Well thank you because I'm sure if there's one thing Sirius Black is good at its getting others into trouble." Remus smiled and nodded,

"It is one of his few talents."

"Oi, I'll have you know I'm a very talented person Moony!" I could see this quickly turned into an argument between the two boys so I said goodnight and made my way over to the girls' staircase, I was just about to start the climb when I heard a crash behind me. I spun around to see Sirius pinning Remus to the ground behind the couches, "Say I'm the most talented person you know! Say it or I won't let you up!" I rolled my eyes, he may have been talented with magic but he was severely lacking in common sense if he thought he could keep Remus pinned; he was a werewolf the night before the full moon. Instead of pointing this out to Sirius I just snorted and turned back to the stairs.

It had only been a day since James announced his plans for the Hogsmeade weekend to us and I was already sick of hearing about it from Lily. She still maintained that she had no interest in even being his friend; their relationship was strictly because of their headships and Lily was fine with that… apparently.

However, that didn't stop her from ranting about how James was trying to get a rise out of her by making her jealous. It wasn't appreciated when Remus pointed out that it was getting a rise out of her and she did seem to be jealous; Remus was banned from our 'study group' until further notice, which meant that not only could he not help me with my Arithmancy essay but I had to sit and endure this alone.

It wasn't until the night before the Hogsmeade visit that I realised I'd agreed to spend the whole day with her, alone. I was really regretting that decision now, it was more than likely that we would see James there with Sophie and that would undoubtedly make the ranting worse.

"Come on Riley, the sooner you get out of bed the sooner you can have breakfast." Even the thought of pancakes drowning in syrup wasn't enough to get me out of my bed that morning, I just knew it was going to be cold out from under my blankets and the thought of what the rest of the day help for me made me turn over and snuggle back down into my quilt and pillow; my nice, warm nest.

It took her three more attempts but eventually Lily did manage to get me out of bed and into the world of the living and conscious, all she had to do was promise me hot butterbeer as soon as we got to the village and actually produce a plate of pancakes in the dorm room. That did the job and before I knew it the promise of butterbeer had been fulfilled and we were shopping for Lily's horrid sister.

By the time Lily realised it was probably about time to feed me again I'd been complaining about how hungry I was for a good hour, we'd managed to find a completely unremarkable scarf that did absolutely nothing apart from keep your neck warm… it may have had a very mild heating charm on it but it was nothing detectable by a muggle such as Petunia, Lily had decided that she was going to get something outrageously magical for her as well as a 'joke gift', I didn't think it sounded like a good idea but she wouldn't listen to me.

We were on our way to the Three Broomsticks for lunch when we saw James walking in the opposite direction, with no Sophie in sight. Once we'd passed him Lily turned to me and grabbed my arm with, what felt like her claws, digging into the skin, "He wasn't with her! What do you think happened? I doubt he even had a date with her, he must have just been saying that to get me to say something about it and then he came here alone! How pathetic. Pretending to have a date just to try to get to me! I mean really what did he exp-"

Instead of finishing her sentence Lily was sprawled out on the road, trying to get up from where she'd fallen. The snow she was standing on had suddenly become extremely slippery and she'd fallen. It took me a minute to react, and before I had the chance to help her up someone else already was; James. I grinned to myself and with my wand already in my hand the charm just slipped out of my mouth, the gentle tripping charm that would put James smoothly into the arms on Lily Evans.

Once we'd all gotten over the shock of what had happened, and I'd managed to control my laughter at the looks on both of their faces when James was suddenly sprawled out on top of him, somewhat resembling Bambi on the ice for the first time, we all went to the Three Broomsticks for something to eat. "Well as much fun as this is I really need to get back to the castle to pack; going home tomorrow after all." Lily looked up as if she was slightly surprised to see me there; I'd been keeping myself out of the conversation, letting the two of them talk more and only speaking to introduce new topics that I knew they had in common but they'd never really spoken about before.

"Oh, I'll go back with you Riley. I'm done for the day anyway." I shook my head and frowned,

"I thought you wanted to get Petunia an inherently magical present as well, something that would really shock her. I'm not sure what that would be but you have one of Hogwarts' master pranksters right here, I'm sure James could help you find something." James suddenly looked up at me like I'd sprouted a second head and it was saying something ludicrous but I left the pub before either of them could argue or complain about my new plan for their day. I just hoped that the reason James hadn't been with Sophie when we saw him was because he'd been on his way to their date, that thought made me frown a bit but from what I knew of Sophie she would realise that it was something important and find some other way to spend her afternoon, I still felt a bit bad though.

After all my plotting I had no idea that something so simply and spur of the moment would be what brought the two of them together, I knew it was just an afternoon they were spending together and they weren't likely to pronounce their love for each other by the time they made it to dinner that evening but I hoped that maybe that outcome was now a step closer.

**I'm so sorry about the appalling length of time I've made you all wait since the last chapter, I hope I still have some readers out there! It seems the move to a new city and an empty flat in my halls of residence have given me some sort of second (maybe third of fourth) wind with this chapter and its finally finished! I'm actually quite pleased with it, even if the beginning does drag on a little bit!**


	18. Chapter 18

The train ride home was as uneventful as it always was, which was why I couldn't help but notice Taylor slipping off somewhere around lunchtime. I had been tempted to follow her, partly because I wanted to know who she was going to meet and partly because I wanted to get away from Lily and James who had been sitting next to each other talking quietly. They weren't doing anything in particular but it still bothered me to see them acting like a couple, when I mentioned this to Gabby she scoffed at me, "You're the one who did that to them, you made her see him differently. I thought this was what you wanted."

"Yeah, I thought that too." I didn't really say much else for the rest of the journey; I refrained from following Taylor because I knew that she wouldn't appreciate it and would send a whole volley of hexes my way if she noticed me, which she would. So instead I sat quietly next to the window of our compartment trying to fight my urge to throw something at Lily, this was getting to be a recurring issue for me and I was starting to think I needed to start spending less time with her.

Joe told mum and dad that he would apparate us from the station to the house, so that mum and dad didn't have to come out. Apparently mum wasn't pleased about the plan and said that she had never missed picking any of us up from the station before and wasn't planning on ever having to, but dad managed to talk her into staying at home.

I'd only been on the platform for about a minute when suddenly there was a man shouting at me, I didn't know what to do or how to react to that, it was one thing having teenagers whisper about you but having a fully grown man standing only inches away from you, shouting abuse at you was quite a different experience. In my shock at the turn of events I didn't react; I just stood there as a group of like-minded parents formed around me. What they were all actually saying was lost in the noise and I only caught snippets about Azkaban, cells in the ministry, being put down and kicking my whole family out of the wizarding community.

Not even being grabbed by the arm and dragged bodily through the crowd of people and into the waiting room at the back of the platform brought me out of the shock. I heard someone setting up a ward so that no one else could get in and I couldn't hear the noise from outside anymore. It wasn't until my face was between someone's hands that I was finally jolted out of my stupor, I was definitely not expecting to look up and see Sirius Black's face looking down at me as my rescuer. He let go of my face and spoke, "Are you okay Hunt?" I nodded,

"I think so. Thank you, but why did you help me?" He took a step back from me and sighed before running a hand through his hair, something he must have picked up from James which I'd never seen him do before,

"No one else was, the people who saw what was happening either stopped to watch or joined in. you might not think much of me Hunt but I would never let someone be put through anything like that for something they has no control over; like who their ancestors were." I nodded again,

"I would never have thought that of you, we may not be friends but I see how protective you are of Remus. I just figured you hated me because of me, not who I'm descended from." He sighed again and looked like he was struggling with something,

"I don't' think I do, Hunt, and that confuses me as much as it confuses me." I turned away from him, not sure what else there was to say, I couldn't think of any response to that. "One more thing and then I'll go get Professor Hunt and your sister," he paused so I turned back to him and nodded for him to continue. "If you see how protective I am of Remus, and by that I'm assuming you mean you've seen me argue against anyone who says anything about werewolves being 'disgusting creatures who ought to be locked up'?" I nodded again, but didn't say anything, "So how can you believe that I would sell your story to the _Prophet_?" I shrugged,

"I don't' think I do Sirius, and I'm just not sure what to do with that. You were the only person who knew and would want to hurt me." He didn't say any more, just nodded and left the waiting room to find Joe and Taylor.

I only had to wait for about five minutes before Sirius led my brother and sister into the room, neither of them were big fans of his but Joe looked mightily impressed with Sirius' wards, "These are some pretty sturdy wards you've set up here, Black." Sirius looked pleased with himself; I think it must have been the first good thing Joe'd ever had to say to him,

"Thank you Sir, I've had a lot of practise, with my family being the way they are." Joe nodded in an understanding way; everyone knew what Sirius' family was like.

"Thanks for bringing Riley here, I had no idea the platform would be like that; I thought if anything parents would go after me, not these two." I turned to Taylor,

"Did they go after you too?" she just shrugged and answered as if it hadn't been a big deal,

"Only a couple got close to me but there were others shouting stuff from further away. I wasn't surrounded like you were though, but then I didn't decide to get off the train into the middle of the platform like you did. I got off closer to the end of the train and an emptier part of the platform." The way she said that made me realise that she thought what had happened to me was all my own fault but before I could say anything Joe put a hand on my shoulder,

"Girls, why don't we go home? We're already half an hour later than we were expected, we don't want mum to worry and come looking for us. That would just make things worse." We both nodded and before Joe apparated us away I gave Sirius a small smile and a wave.

Once we'd landed Taylor turned on me, "I suppose you're going to tell me you don't think it was Black either?"

"Now that you mention it, no I don't think it was him, I don't know who did but it wasn't any of the Gryffindors. They're my friends Tay, or at least they care about my friends enough that they wouldn't want to hurt me like that!"

"Just because he brought you into that room, away from the parents it doesn't mean he's your friend now! You're so naïve Riley, sometimes I wonder how you've even made it this far in life!"

"That is not the only reason I don't think it was him, there's other stuff too but you've only just arrived at Hogwarts so don't pretend you know everything that's going on there!" We were both getting red in the face and were breathing a bit heavier than we had been. This time it was Taylor who didn't get to respond because our mother swept down around us all and dragged the three of us into a group hug. I noticed that she had her cloak on and her bag on her shoulder; it looked like Joe had been right and she was all set to come searching for us.

"I've been so worried about you all! I thought something awful must have happened but your father wouldn't let me come down to the station to get you myself, he said you're all old enough now and you can take care of yourselves." She let us out of the death grip she'd had us in and gave us all individual squeezes instead, "What happened? Why were you so late getting back? And don't any of you tell me it was because the train was late. It never has been before and I'm not about to believe that it was today!" The three of us all exchanged glances; we all knew that what had happened on the platform would upset her and likely make her feel even more guilty about what was happening than she already did, none of us wanted that.

"I wasn't thinking when I got off the train and I got out onto the middle of the latform and some of the parents weren't all too happy to see me there. But its okay because Sirius Black took me to the waiting room and warded it so that no one could get in without him, then he made sure it was okay before he went and found Joe and Tay. Sorry you were worried Mum." Mum gathered me up and hugged me tight again, when she spoke I could hear tears in her voice,

"I'm so sorry that happened to you!" She let go of me so that she just had an arm wrapped around my shoulder, and turned to the others, "Did you two have any trouble?" Joe shook his head,

"A little, but nothing like Riley got. I was sitting near the end of the train and got off where it wasn't so busy, it wasn't because I thought anything like this would happen, it was just where I was sitting." She smiled at me over mum's shoulder, "I didn't mean what I said before we left Lee; I know it wasn't you fault." I nodded and smiled back at her, but noted that she didn't take back what she'd said when we arrived home.

We spent the rest of the afternoon discussing all the rest of what had been happening; they were pleased that I'd made up with Lily and the girls, that Taylor was making friends at Hogwarts and that all of my friends had welcomed her and accepted her into our group without any question. Mum admonished Joe for still not having a girlfriend and as he sat blushing Tay and I shared a look full of promises to find out more later, but he said that he didn't have the time for dating and besides all the girls around him were his underage students, unless mum was suggesting that he try and woo one of his fellow professors, everyone laughed at the thought of that and the conversation moved on. The relieved sigh Joe let out told us that he thought he was safe; he didn't notice the identical smirks Taylor and I were wearing.

After dinner we all went up to our rooms to unpack, Taylor and I quickly abandoned our efforts and went to find out why Joe had been blushed about the girlfriend talk; he hadn't since his fourth year when he fancied a girl in her seventh year. We'd only just gotten started when mum appeared in his doorway, "Are you girls already unpacked?" we both nodded and I punched Joe on the shoulder when he snorted,

"We came to help Joey; he always takes longer than we do." Mum smiled and nodded but I'm not sure she actually believed us or she was just glad we all appeared to be getting along with each other at the same time."

"Riley, you've got a floo call in the sitting room."

"Okay, I'll be right down. I'll be back though Joey and we'll finish helping you unpack." Taylor grinned at me as I left but Joe just sat down on his bed with a sigh.

I made my way down to the sitting room expecting the head in the fireplace to be Gabby or Susie, James' head was the very last person I'd been expecting, but there he was.

"Hey Riley, think I can come through? I've always hated floo calling, it's just so uncomfortable!"

"Uh sure, come on through." I stepped back to let him through, once we were settled on the sofas I couldn't stop myself from asking, "What're you doing here James?" He grinned at me,

"That almost sounded like you're not happy to see me."

"No, I am happy to see you, I'm just a bit confused at the same time. I thought you weren't speaking to me because of the Halloween thing?" he nodded,

"I wasn't speaking to you because of the Halloween thing, but then the _Prophet_ thing happened and the dragon's blood thing and then you left for France. When you left I realised what an arse I was being but I didn't know what I could say to make things better; I knew I didn't want to put it in a letter so I'd have to wait until you were back here for Christmas. Then when you got back Taylor was with you and she didn't seem to like me much but you were never alone to speak to. But then the Hogsmeade thing happened and I worked out that what I needed to say was thank you." I frowned,

"Thank you for what?" he raised an eyebrow to give me a look that said 'you know what', but he answered me anyway.

"I know you tripped Lily, or made her slip on ice or whatever you did. I don't know if you had a plan in mind or if she was just bugging you that much, but either way it doesn't really matter. Then when I was helping her I somehow ended up sprawled across her and I know you were reasonable for that too, so you got us talking. Then you stuck with us, introducing topics we both find interesting and are able to talk about for hours so you kept us talking. And then you found a way to make the part of my personality that she hates the most about me and make it something that was useful to her. You're a bloody genius!" He said the last part with a huge grin. I on the other hand was sat staring at him with my mouth gaping open by the time he'd finished; I didn't think I'd done much in the end but hearing it all laid out like that made me realise he actually had quite a bit to thank me for, "You also did all that when I hadn't been speaking to you for almost two months, and after I kicked you off the quidditch team and then accused you of cheating the system to get back on it. So really I owe you more than a thank you."

"You're welcome then I guess." He grinned again and this time I couldn't help but return it; I had my best friend back!

"So when you tripped her did you have it all planned out? Knowing that I would come rushing to her rescue." I shook my head and bit my lower lip,

"She was just really annoying me! I told her I would help her get a present for her sister but I didn't know that it would involve traipsing around every shop in Hogsmeade, some of them twice, before we even bought anything! And she kept promising me food after the next shop but by the time we were done she'd forgotten, then when we were finally on the way to get lunch she decided that afterwards she wanted to find another bloody present for her! It all worked out rather well after that though, everything just sort of fell into place!" James chuckled; he'd experienced a Hogsmeade day without feeding me and he knew it wasn't a fun experience for anyone involved. "Speaking of Hogsmeade, what happened to your date with Sophie Clark?" His face reddened slightly,

"She asked me to go with her but I said no and asked her to tell her I'd said yes if Lily or one of you girls happened to ask. I thought maybe it would make Lily jealous or something but it was a dumb idea, even Sirius said so, and I doubt it even worked anyways."

"That's good, I felt kind of bad for stealing her date away from her to set him up with someone else, but I guess I don't need to!" he shook his head and we both went quiet for a while,

"I am sorry, by the way, for treating you the way I did, especially the quidditch thing.. although that was Sirius' idea I should never have listened to him; he only has a good idea about once every three months and he's already filled his quota for the term." I couldn't not laugh at that,

"Its okay James. I should have just told you straight away that it was me at the masquerade ball." He shook his head again,

"I should have recognised you! We've been best friends since first year!" I smiled at him,

"It doesn't matter anymore. We're good again?" he nodded and stood up to leave, I went and joined him at the fireplace and he awkwardly held his arms open for a hug, I stepped into them and grinned; that was where I needed to be. He was just about to step into the emerald flames when he turned back to me again,

"She said she'd visit me over the holiday, I can't wait for my mum to meet her!" he looked so happy and I couldn't help but grin at him,

"James that's great! I'm sure she'll love both of your parents, just like we all do! Have a wonderful time. Oh, and make sure Sirius is on his best behaviour!" He smiled happily and spun out of my sitting room in a whoosh of ash.

I went to see if Taylor had made any progress with Joe while I was gone. When I got back to his room she was still standing just inside the doorway but she was now wearing a huge smile on her face while he was sitting with his back against his headboard with his knees drawn up to his chest and his head in his hands, "So, how's it going?" Taylor turned to me,

"There's someone he likes but he won't tell me who she is, she's either a student or she's old… like McGonagall, she isn't married!" Joe and I both pulled faces at the thought of that,

"You do realise that you could make all of this stop by just telling us who she is right?"

"You two do not need to know every detail of my life! Now leave me alone! I have essays to grade and I'd rather not leave it until the end of the holiday. I'm sure you both have homework to do. At least you do in my class!"

"I think we may have pushed him too much for one night." Joe's bedroom door slammed shut behind us as Taylor spoke. I turned towards my own bedroom, "Where are you going?"

"Back to my room?" I'd thought it was obvious; my bedroom is on its own hallway.

"Why?" I rolled my eyes; she was like a five year old sometimes,

"Because I need to unpack and then I'm going to get started on my Transfiguration homework." She wrinkled her nose up at me,

"Why Joe's Homework?" I smirked,

"Because not only will it mean I have less to cram into the last few days of the holiday, it'll add to his workload at the same time. I have a feeling this is going to be the longest and most detailed essay I've ever written!"

"It's time like these that remind me we're related." Then she turned to go back to her room, presumably with the same plan as me.

The next morning Taylor and I both turned up for breakfast with five rolls of parchment each, dad looked up from his paper and looked at them curiously, "What've you got there girls?"

"Well dad, we were talking to Joey last night and he reminded us that we had holiday homework to do so we both took his advice and got to work." Dad looked impressed with us but Joe had figured out there was something else going on and from the look on his face he was trying to figure out what was happening.

"So you both finished all your Christmas homework on the first night of the holiday? Well done girls."

"Actually no; we both only managed to get one essay finished, we both just happen to find Metamorphmagi so interesting that it took us the whole night to finish."

"So we thought we may as well hand our essays in early." We both looked at Joey wearing identical smirks, dad looked confused and Joe groaned,

"I just finished my marking for the holiday last night!" Dad cottoned on and chuckled,

"You should have learnt by now Joey, my boy, not to try and be a professor to Riley over the holidays. You've never come out of it best." I smirked at Joe and handed him my essay, which he took with a scowl.

"Have I ever told you that I really hate that there're two of them?" that was something he's said a fair few times to us and to mum and dad, it always made mum frown at him. He took Taylor's essay as well and left the table trying to keep hold of all ten rolls. Taylor and I grinned at each other and started to eat our breakfast, just waiting.

Sure enough about ten minutes later, "Did you write them with a bloody magnifying glass?" Taylor and I let our laughter out and dad joined in but mum was still frowning at the two of us,

"Girls, that wasn't nice. I want you to go and apologise to your brother and do your homework properly."

"It is done properly, and I even managed to master the technique Professor Flitwick is going to teach us after Christmas. I had no idea how simple it would be to localise a shrinking charm so precisely that you can shrink writing but leave the parchment the same size. And _Professor Hunt_ should be able to work out how to counter it easily enough." Dad looked impressed again; he'd never been one for charms so hearing about one of us doing spells like that had always been a source of pride for him.

"Are you saying that you want us to apologise to our teacher for doing out homework? And handing it in early? I suppose you'd rather we spent our whole holiday shopping and playing quidditch instead? Well if you insist I'll happily oblige." I thought Taylor had pushed a little too hard but mum just smiled and shook her head,

"I do miss this when you're all away."

We spent the next few days exactly as Taylor had suggested we would, we managed to convince dad to play a few games of Quidditch with us so we could have even teams but even four players didn't make for the best matches. Mum took us Christmas shopping because she's always found Joe really hard to buy for but Taylor and I had always been pretty good as thinking of things, and just shopping in general.

Once mum felt that she had enough for everyone to open on Christmas morning she let us make plans with our friends; that had always been how we did Christmas. We had family time until all the presents were bought and then we could see our friends. We'd hated that when we were in first year because we always felt like we were being left out of everything but as we got older we realised that it was important for us to all spend time as a family since we didn't get to see each other much during the year, it was also the longest dad ever spent away from the ministry. Having said that, it was always good when mum told us we were allowed to see our friends.

Taylor invited the girls she'd left behind in France to stay over for a couple of nights, which just happened to be the same couple of nights I'd invited Gabby and Susie to stay for. When we went to mum with our little dilemma she shook her head at us wearing a little knowing smile,

"I refuse to believe this just happened without at least a bit of planning from one of you." But she was still smiling and sounded slightly affectionate, "Which nights will they be staying?"

"The seventeenth and eighteenth." We answered in unison and dad chuckled, he had always been amused whenever we spoke in unison, something which used to get us out of a lot of trouble before mum discovered that particular soft spot.

"Okay, but you must all behave yourselves. That just so happens to be the night your father and I will be going to visit your uncle." Joe's head shot up at that bit of knowledge,

"I have to deal with not only these two but four of their friends as well?" Taylor turned and sent a smirk in his direction,

"You could invite this girl you fancy to help you cope." He turned red and left the room,

"Tay, that was mean. He obviously doesn't want to talk about her."

"Thank you Riley! Finally someone with a sense of privacy in this house!"


	19. Chapter 19

On the morning mum and dad were meant to be leaving to stay with dad's brother David, mum spent at least fifteen minutes fussing over us in front of the fire pace while dad was stood with a handful of floo powder ready in his hand, waiting for her. "Are you sure you're going to have enough food?" Taylor rolled her eyes, while Joe and I responded,

"Yes mum, we're sure, you'll only be gone for two nights. How much do you this we eat?" even dad snorted at that,

"We'll be fine."

"And you know how to get hold of us, if you do need anything?"

"We've been using owls since we could write and we all know how to work the floo network." Dad let out a sigh of relief as mum finally relented and moved towards him, she almost made it into the fireplace when she turned back to us and we all groaned,

"She was so close!" I elbowed Taylor,

"Are you sure the beds are all made?"

"Yes mum, it's all fine, just go already!" Joe and I frowned at Taylor. Dad had finally managed to manoeuvre mum into the fireplace and had just activated the floo when she called out once more,

"Did you check-" We didn't get to hear the rest of mum's question as she was swept away by the flames halfway through it, Taylor snickered,

"She'll regret that last one; she'll be coughing up ash until New Year." She sighed and looked up at the clock, "I thought they'd never leave." She turned and grinned at us before wandering back to her bedroom, Joe and I exchanged looks; the fact that Taylor had been so anxious for mum and dad to leave the house made both of us think that she was probably up to something neither of us would approve of.

We weren't disappointed, about half an hour after dad finally managed to get mum through the floo the chime sounded to let us know someone was coming through, the first was followed by two more in quick succession and a lot of shouting, by the time I was standing outside the living room with my wand out ready there had been another chime. I edged towards the doorway and started to hear noises coming from the other side of the door, laughing and a scuffling noise I couldn't figure out. When I went through the door I immediately stopped short at the sight of the pile of marauders on the floor. Well; James, Sirius and Peter were on the floor and seemed to be wrestling while Remus was standing over them trying to get them to behave. James and Peter seemed to be having a genuine fight about something while Sirius wriggled on top of them almost cackling.

"Er, what's going on?" Remus jumped and let go of the arm he'd been using to try to get Sirius off the other two boys, causing Sirius to fall back to the floor.

"Hey Riley, sorry about them. They don't know how to behave in other peoples' homes." He kicked at the squirming pile of boys a couple of times and Sirius eventually gave up trying to join James and Peter's fight and stood glaring at Remus. I decided to ignore him for now,

"Well I know that but what are you guys doing here?"

"Taylor owled us all a couple of nights ago saying that you were having a little gathering tonight and told us we should all come along." I frowned,

"The small gathering was supposed to be Gabby, Susie, me and Taylor and a couple of Tay's friends from France." Sirius abruptly stopped glaring at Remus and grinned at me,

"She never mentioned there were going to be French girls!" His grin started to become a little lewd and I rolled my eyes at him while Remus punched him in the arm. I turned back to Remus,

"I understand why you three would come, we're friends but why is Black here?" Sirius dropped his grin and let his eyebrows fall back to where they were supposed to be,

"First of all, I'd appreciate it if you didn't talk about me like I'm not standing right next to you. And secondly I'm sure we decided to be friends. Y'know after I saved your life at the train station, and you said that you don't hate me anymore, and because you know the whole thing with the Prophet wasn't my fault, and-"

"Okay, I get it!" I glanced down and realised that James and Peter were still wrestling, "Do they even realise I'm here?" Sirius shrugged and Remus sighed,

"I doubt it; they were like that when Sirius shoved them through the floo." My mouth dropped open and I turned on Sirius,

"Do you not realise how dangerous that is?! They could have ended up anywhere!" Sirius just shrugged and started cheering for James, Remus and I just watched; it was difficult to look away. "What were they fighting about?" Remus frowned,

"I'm not totally sure, we were getting ready to come here and James started going on about his day with Lily yesterday and how he was going to find some way to thank you for getting her to go out with him, and I think Peter said she has pretty eyes or nice hair or something and James kind of just attacked him."

"He seems to be doing pretty well, considering James is a fair bit stronger than him."

"I think Sirius was helping him for a bit." I nodded in understanding, sort of understanding. I managed to draw my eyes away and turned to the two upright boys,

"Do you two want something to drink? Or something to eat?" Sirius left the boys to it at the mention of food, and the two followed me to the kitchen.

We sat chatting in the kitchen for a bit after I'd fed the boys, "Riley! Get in here!" I groaned,

"Where's here?"

"The living room!" I dropped my head onto my arms, before standing up and heading towards Joe's shouting, Sirius grinned,

"I think Professor Hunt found Prongs and Wormtail."

"I think you might be right about that Padfoot." Joe was standing in the middle of the living room looking pretty angry about the fact that two of his students were fighting in the middle of the floor,

"What, exactly, is going on in here?"

"They're fighting over Lily Evans' honour, Sir." I glared at Sirius and Remus smacked him on the back of his head,

"Did you invite them over Riley? Or did they just happen to drop by just after mum and dad left?"

"Wait, you're parents aren't here? Excellent." Remus hit him again,

"Actually, Taylor invited them. I didn't know about it until they showed up."

"Why didn't you tell me they were here?"

"Why didn't you answer the floo?"

"Because I didn't hear it."

"Well then you must not have heard me telling you they were here. Really Joey, you should have your ears checked." Sirius chuckled but stopped at the glare he got from Joe. Joe pulled out his wand and Sirius cowered behind me but Joe turned his wand to the boys and levitated James off of Peter,

"Now, why didn't either of you two think of that? You're both supposed to be brainy." Remus and I both chose to ignore Sirius that time. Both of the boys continued to thrash around still throwing punches for a few seconds before they realised they'd been separated.

"Professor Hunt, what're you doing here?"

"This is my living room. What're you doing here?" James looked around, looking confused,

"So it is. I'm not totally sure, Professor. I could've sworn we were in my kitchen."

"That was before Sirius pushed the two of you through the floo." James frowned at Sirius,

"Well that was a bit dangerous; we could have wound up anywhere!"

"That's almost word for word what she said!"

"Who said?"

"I said."

"Oh! Hey Riley! How's your holiday been?"

"Pretty good, how about yours?"

"Excellent. I've seen Lily three times already! She came over to the house once and we went to Diagon Alley and a muggle place. Hey Professor Hunt, d'you think you could put me down? Not a huge fan of being in the air without a broom." Joe shook his head looking bemused, cancelled the spell that had been suspending James and wandered off to another room. I called after him,

"Oh, Joe, could you tell Taylor her guests are here. She obviously didn't hear the floo either." He shouted something back which I didn't quite catch but I'm sure wasn't particularly polite.

It wasn't long before the floo chimed again and Gabby stepped out of the fireplace. She looked surprised to find the boys sitting around but she didn't mention anything as she greeted everyone, I stood up and gave her a hug, "Don't worry, I wasn't expecting them either."

"Not that I'm not thrilled to see them, but if you didn't invite them then why are they here?"

"Taylor invited them without telling me. I'm not sure why though. She hasn't come out of her room since mum and dad left." I frowned, wondering what she was doing; she never usually spent that much time alone in her bedroom, she didn't like to be in her own company for too long. Mum always said it was because she was a twin; she was used to always being with someone. "I think I'm just going to go and see if she wants to join us." The others nodded and continued their catch up.

I was just about to knock on Taylor's door when the floo chimed again; I turned back to the living room. Susie practically launched herself at me when I went into the room, "I've missed you so much!" I laughed through a mouthful of hair and gently separated us,

"I missed you too Suze! Would you like something to drink?" I heard Gabby huffing behind me,

"You never offered me anything to drink!" I laughed at the look on her face,

"Would you like something?" She stuck her nose up into the air,

"Not if you're just offering out of obligation." I knew she wanted me to grovel and assure her I really wanted to get her a drink, like nothing would make me happier, so I shrugged and turned away,

"Suit yourself then. Come on Susie." Gabby gasped and crossed her arms across her chest but she didn't follow us to the kitchen, we heard Sirius' barking laughter and the other boys' more subdued laughs as we chatted in the kitchen.

I'd just finished saying something when I noticed that Susie was listening intently to something else, "What-" but Susie just held up a finger to silence me, I opened my mouth again but she glared at me with such force that I just closed it without saying anything,

"Don't you hear that?" I cocked my head and listened, thinking it was odd that she could hear something I couldn't. I shook my head; I couldn't hear anything. "Silence." My eyes widened, silence was never a good thing when the marauders were involved.

We both rushed back through to the living room to find it empty, Susie glanced back at me and I shrugged, "Three, two, one! FIRE!" with that as our only warning we were fairly unprepared for the snowball pelting we were subjected to. None of them got us in the face, which I can only assume was down to Remus, but by the time they ran out of ammunition we were both soaking wet and all seven of us we practically rolling around with laughter,

"I really expected them to be angrier than this…" Joe heard us and came through to see what all the noise was about, and not so kindly suggested we take our snowball fight outside so we did just that.

We all rushed to get wrapped up in hats, scarves, gloves and jackets, all of us determined to be the team that was out of the door first, "But there's seven of us, the teams are going to be uneven however we divide."

"I'll go get Taylor, that'll make it four girls and four boys; it couldn't possibly be fairer!" I headed back into the house but before I could even take my boots off I was hit in the back of the head with a pile of snow courtesy of Sirius Black,

"If you leave the field once the war has begun it will count as a retreat and your team will lose and have to do some forfeit I have yet to come up with! You have been warned Miss Hunt, but by all means go and find Taylor." Sirius had that infuriating smirk on his face again and I think I growled at him before stalking back towards him and the others. "Okay, we'll pick teams. I'll go first and then James. Rem-" It seemed to take us all a second to process what Sirius had said but when we did there were shouts of protest from Susie, Gabby, Remus and I,

"Who exactly decided you and James would be team captains?" It was Remus' protest that seemed to get through to Sirius but we'd all said similar things,

"What d'you mean Moony? That's how it always is."

"It's Riley's house, she should pick captains." Sirius turned to James with a look of utter betrayal on his face,

"How could you say that James?" James rolled his eyes with a long-suffering look on his face and turned to me, ignoring Sirius' continued protests.

"Who do you think should be team captains, Riley?" I turned and smiled at Sirius,

"Well, obviously I will be and I think Sir-" Sirius grinned and shouted,

"I pick Remus!"

"Let me finish! I think Sirius would make an awful captain, but Peter on the other hand would be wonderful." Peter's head shot up to stare at me, open mouthed and disbelieving, Sirius couldn't seem to decide between glaring at me or glaring at Peter, so he settled on going back and forth between us while every ignored him and waited to see what Peter had to say about my decision,

"Yes, Peter, you. You can pick first." Peter grinned at me but Sirius caught his eye before he could make his choice, his grin fell and he all but stuttered,

"I don't think I should be captain; Sirius would do a much better job of it than me." Sirius jumped in the air and did a fist pump,

"Aha, see! The boy does have some sense after all!" James and Remus frowned at Sirius, "I pick-"

"I think I'll pick first, actually Sirius."

"But you just said Peter could pick!"

"I changed my mind. Remus, you're with me." Remus grinned at me and came over to stand behind me, high fiving me as he passed. Sirius wasn't as pleased with my choice as everyone else seemed to be,

"Fine, I get Susie!" Susie reluctantly went to join Sirius and he sent me a smug smile, I chose Gabby and Sirius was about to announce his final decision, which we all worked out would be his partner in crime, James. Peter was keeping his eyes on the ground, which meant that he didn't notice James' frantic gestures for Sirius to choose the other boy over him; Susie nudged his in the ribs and murmured something to him, which of course Remus and I both heard,

"You should know that if you don't pick Peter you will be on your own against the six of us." Sirius made a quick glance around at the rest of us and realised from the looks on our faces that Susie was right,

"I think I'll go with Pete, sorry James." Peter finally looked up from the ground in front of him and grinned at Sirius, it was hard to see him looking so grateful to not be picked last for once.

"Okay, now that teams are sorted we'll have five minutes for team huddles and then we'll begin." I noticed Joe standing at the backdoor looking bemused, I sent him a shrug and he turned to go back inside, "Wanna play? Sirius could use another teammate."

"Er, I'm alright actually Riley. Wouldn't want to disturb _Professor_ Hunt!" I snorted and Joe shook his head and carried on his way.

My strategy for the fight was to defend until Susie and Peter got pissed off enough at Sirius that they would turn on him, it seemed like the easiest and most amusing was to play it. James, Remus and Gabby all agreed and we started to make our snowballs while watching Sirius' wild gesticulations towards us, the woods behind us and Susie. Remus and I were eavesdropping quite happily until Peter reminded him about my abilities- carefully not mentioning Remus- which made Sirius drop his voice so low I'm sure Peter and Susie were having difficulty hearing him. Remus and I shared a look and a chuckle and went back to creating a snow back to shelter behind.

Once the fight started it started to look like it wasn't going to last as long as I'd thought, we were doing a good job of pelting the others with snow; they were getting a lot of good shots in as well but there were four of us. The four of us were all ducked down behind our snow bank catching our breath after an energetic battle between the two camps when we heard Susie giggling and Sirius shouting at her. We all peered over the top of the bank, cautious in case this was some tactic from Sirius we hadn't thought to anticipate, and saw that Susie has given up on the fight altogether and was building a snowman instead; Sirius was gesticulating towards us again while Peter watched him, not looking too impressed, "Its working Riles, they're gonna turn on him!"

It only took about another ten minutes until Sirius crushed Susie's snowman and shouted at her to stick to his plan, after that and a shared look with Peter they both charmed new snow men and had them pelt Sirius with snow along with the rest of us. Eventually Sirius gave in and called for a ceasefire, which I may have accidently ignored long enough to hit him once more in the back of the head. In true Sirius Black fashion he over reacted, picked up our snow bank and dumped it on my head. Remus came to rescue me when I didn't manage to dig myself out, he levitated the top of the pile off me just in time to see me take a bite out of it; he stared at me with a kind of curious look which turned to satisfaction when my nose scrunched up, "It's cold, Remus. Made my head hurt." He shook his head with a smile and helped me out of the snow,

"Why don't we go and get you a hot chocolate? That'll make it better, won't it?" Remus gave the distinct impression of dealing with a child and chuckled at me when I grinned and ran for the house as soon as he had me back on my feet. "We're going inside for hot chocolates." He was good enough to answer the questioning looks that I ignored in my quest.

We were sitting in the living room, our drinks finished long ago, when Monica tumbled out of the floo, "Oh, I wasn't expecting an audience." She blushed at her less than perfect landing, "Never did get the hang of the Floo Network." I smiled and Gabby piped up,

"It was probably better than most of Riley's landings; she's terrible with Flooing." I sent a mock glare at Gabby but nodded in agreement,

"I much prefer to fly. Oh, these are my friends Gabby and Susie; they're staying a couple of nights as well. This is Remus, James, Peter and Sirius they're... the boys, I guess. They won't be staying the night though; they're just spending the afternoon here." Once Monica was introduced to everyone I realised that I should probably go off in search of Taylor but I met Joe along the way,

"Where are you off to? Shouldn't you be supervising your friends?" He arched an eyebrow, reminding me of dad when he 'suggested' that we should be doing something.

"Monica just arrived so I was going to find Tay, I haven't seen her at all since mum and dad left… its strange. Have you seen her?" Joe frowned and shook his head; he came with me to let her know that Monica had arrived. I was just about to knock when a smash from the kitchen made us jump, swear and march back towards my guests.

We got to the kitchen to see Sirius, Remus and James standing guiltily over a pile of broken crockery, "We were going to wash the mugs up and Sirius thought he would be able to carry all of them by himself... he was wrong."

"Yes, we can see that. And why would you two think it was a good idea to allow him to try?" Remus blushed a bit and looked down at the broken mugs while James muttered,

"We wanted to see if he could actually do it." It took a whole lot of my self control not to laugh; of course they would let him try. The three of them looked so nervous at how their professor was going to react, but I managed to keep a straight, extremely unimpressed face. Eventually I sensed Joe starting to crack and let myself smirk at them, Joe pulled his wand out and reparo'd the broken mugs,

"Be more careful boys, and don't let Sirius try things because you want to see if he can do them. At least not in this house." Joe headed back to his bedroom, leaving me to deal with the boys; they started to move back towards the living room,

"Where d'you think you're going? Joey fixed the mugs, he didn't clean them. Get to it boys." Sirius groaned and turned back to the sink and got started.

I went back to the living room, where Monica was chatting with Peter, Gabby and Susie, "I feel like I've been a terrible host; I actually invited you two and it feels like I've spent most of my day with those boys. Oh! I was supposed to be finding Taylor, sorry, the breaking things distracted me! I'll go get her for you now." My awful hostess skills were just going to have to continue for a little while longer, at least they weren't quite as bad as Taylor's.

I knocked on Taylor's door but just let myself in when she didn't respond, I frowned when I saw her room was empty but just assumed she was in the bathroom. I waited for a few minutes before getting up to check in the bathroom; she wasn't in there either, I crossed the hallways to Joey's room and knocked, he opened the door with a sigh, "D'you have any idea where Tay could be? She isn't in her room or the bathroom…" Joe shrugged and shook his head,

"I haven't seen her since this morning when mum and dad left. You sure she isn't in her room?" I shook my head but Joe went to check anyway, "Huh, you're right. Wonder where she's gotten off to." Joe and I were standing in the hallway between the bathroom and Taylor's room trying to work out where she'd been all day when she appeared behind us,

"Who's gotten off where?" She asked us with a grin,

"You, actually. Where have you been all day?" Tay looked at me like she was concerned for my health,

"I've been in my bedroom, where else would I have been? Shouldn't you be with your friends anyways, you can talk to Joe any time."

"As opposed to her friends who she lives with?" Joe said with a smirk in Taylor's direction, she stuck her tongue out at him,

"You should be with your friends as well, y'know the ones you invited here from France… and the boys who you also invited from Hogwarts. Why did you invite them over?" Taylor shrugged,

"I thought you might want them here and didn't think you were going to invite them. Are Jen and Monica here already? I thought I'd told them to get here after dinner." She asked with a frown on her face, I nodded,

"Well, Monica's here... and maybe she's already had dinner?" Taylor headed towards the living room to find Monica, and I turned to Joe, "She definitely wasn't in there just now, was she?" Joe shook his head,

"I'm sure she'll tell us where she was at some point; she's always been awful at keeping things from you." I nodded with a smile, it was true that Taylor had always had issues keeping anything a secret from me, mum used to get so frustrated with her for ruining my birthday and Christmas presents when we were little. My smile fell a little remembered that she had managed to keep who she'd been seeing in Hogsmeade quiet, despite my badgering, I shook my head to clear the thoughts from my mind and headed back to the living room.

Taylor whisked Monica out of the living room, with a glare for Sirius who'd had her giggling and blushing, and asked us to send Jennifer back when she arrived. I heard Taylor asking Monica why she'd arrived so early but Taylor's bedroom door closed before I heard Monica's explanation.

I sighed and turned back to the boys, they seemed to be in the middle of some debate about something; Sirius and James were nodding and grinning while Remus and Peter seemed to be trying to convince them that whatever they were planning was a bad idea, I could only hope that Remus and Peter won that one but I had my doubts.

The rest of the day was spent relaxing in the living room; Sirius did attempt to convince us to have a snowball fight rematch with mixed up teams but he was the only one who thought that was a good idea. Susie, Gabby and I had started to discuss what we could make for dinner when Sirius interrupted with a grinning James at his shoulder, "Actually Hunt, we thought that since we gate crashed your 'girl's weekend' or whatever this was supposed to be we thought that we would go and find some dinner for everyone. There must be somewhere around here we can find some food." I nodded and made a few suggestions before the four boys left the house; Remus sent me an apologetic look as they left so of course I was worried about what they were planning until they got back.

It turned out that I was right to be worried; the boys arrived back with some containers of food from the Leaky Cauldron as well as armfuls of butterbeer and fire whiskey. "We thought we could make this a proper party!" James must have seen the look on my face as he quickly felt the need to defend their idea,

"This is our last Christmas holiday from Hogwarts and I don't think we're likely to have another empty house, we have to take advantage of it! It's our duty as marauders!" Taylor must have been able to smell the food as the three other girls had found their way back to the living room, and they all looked pretty excited about the prospect of turning our night into something a bit more exciting. It made me nervous, remembering all of the marauder parties I'd been to at school and the amount of mess that was always left behind in the room of requirements. "Don't worry, we haven't invited anyone else, it'll just be the ten of us!" I breathed a sigh of relief, there was no way ten people could be that difficult to control.

We decided it would be fun to play some of the muggle board games we'd accumulated over the years but after we caught Sirius stealing from the back in monopoly one too many times we quickly forgot that idea. Taylor suggested twister but after we'd explained it to the others, and Sirius' face lit up as he looked at Monica, she quickly invented a family brawl that had ended in the twister mat being torn in half. She smirked at him as he pouted about being teased with the idea of a game like that only to have it ripped away from him.

Eventually we settled on just putting some music on and enjoying each others' company like grownups, which of course meant that we were all nursing a bottle of firewhiskey each and pretending that we enjoyed the taste. Once there were a few empty bottles dotted around the room I noticed that Sirius had managed to get Monica away from Taylor and Jennifer and they seemed quite cosy, much to Gabby's dismay. I prodded her in the side to drag her attention away from the two of them; "I thought you and Black were a thing?" she shrugged,

"We went to Hogsmeade a couple of times, no big deal." But from the expression on her face, it was indeed a big deal to her.

"Why don't you just go and talk to him? You obviously like him." She turned and stared at me with a raised eyebrow and a slightly incredulous look on her face,

"Like you just go and talk to James?" I narrowed my eyes at her and sighed, glancing around the room I realised that Susie was nowhere to be seen,

"Have you seen Susie? I swear she was here a second ago…" Gabby rolled her eyes at my less than subtle change of topics,

"No, she wandered off about half an hour ago… I don't think she said where she was heading though. Everyone else is here though; maybe she went to bed already." I stood up to go and look for her, "Where're you going? Don't leave me here on my own!"

"Well come with me then." Gabby shook her head and wriggled further down into the sofa, "I'll send James and Remus to come keep you company." That drew a smile and a content nod of the head; I shook mine with a smile and headed over to where the two boys were sitting and picked up a couple of the butter beers from the table beside them, "Either of you two dashing young men fancy keeping Gabby company while I go off in search of Susie?" They both grinned and moved over to Gabby's sofa; as soon as they sat down she threw her arms around their shoulders,

"So happy we're all friends again!"

"I wasn't aware that we weren't friends Gab, were you Remus?" Remus shook his head looking a little dumbfounded. I don't know how the rest of that conversation went as I headed down towards my room to see if Gab was right and Susie had just gone to bed early. I also wanted to drop one of the butter beers off with Joe, to thank him for being okay with us all getting drunk in the living room. The other was to lure Susie back to the others.

His bedroom door was open, which I figured was so he'd be able to hear us in case he was needed for something. "Well I guess I can kill two birds with one stone then. Joe, this is for you and Susie, this one is for you." I said holding the drinks out to them, they both froze mid-laugh and turned to face me in the door way, "Susie, could I have a word with my brother?" Susie nodded and dashed past me back to the living room, Joe sighed,

"Well? What d'you want to say to me? Are you going to shout at me to stop stealing your friends?" Instead of saying anything I just turned and stormed back to the living room and threw myself into one of the arm chairs with a fresh bottle of fire whiskey.

**AN: I have to say that I am ashamed with myself that it's been such a long time since I wrote anything for this, I have been in love with this story since I first thought it up and here I've all but abandoned it! I can't believe that the last update was at the beginning of my first year of uni and I'm just about to go into my third! **

**I'm not totally sure how I feel about this chapter, it seems to be really long but not really have much happening in it, but it does feel good to finally have this one done… its been giving me a lot of trouble. **

**I will be so surprised if anyone is actually still reading this but if you are then thank you and hopefully there will be a much shorter wait for the next chapter! As always, leave me a review with any criticisms or suggestions. **


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